Assassin
by JMK758
Summary: A mysterious, deadly enemy is targeting Abby, can Gibbs and the Team save her? Mysteries are solved, clues from previous stories come together and the face of NCIS is forever changed. Please REVIEW I live for Reviews! No Spoilers, Please.
1. Devastation

Disclaimer: Belisarius Productions owns NCIS. I don't even own Abby, Cynthia, Michelle or Ziva. I do, however, own Dawn and Siobhan Sha-vawn, and they are enough for any man!  
This is my sixth NCIS Mystery, not counting non-Mysteries 'Abby's Night Out', 'Into the Light' and 'INCIS' nor those I write under another name. While 'Superheroine Affair', 'Jurisdiction', 'Wiccan Affair', 'Sacramental Seal' and 'Fantasy Affair' all stand alone, the back stories cover a progression related to the fourth Season of the Series. References are made to several points in these back stories, so you may want to read them to familiarize yourself with the characters and situations.  
Dawn Caldwell of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana was introduced in 'Jurisdiction', while Rev. Siobhan O'Mallory made her first appearance in 'Sacramental Seal'. Each appeared in 'Fantasy Affair'.  
Rating: T - or NCis-17. Occasional violence, descriptions of autopsy and forensic evidence, frank adult topics, murder, violence, intrigue - typical days for them.  
Your Reviews are welcome, but please do not reveal what happens in the Mystery. Please be discreet.  
This story begins _before _the conclusion of 'Fantasy Affair'; the Prologue _is_ the Epilogue of 'Fantasy Affair'. Later stories include 'Dark Night', 'Elf Lord', 'Inner Darkness' and 'Swiss Knife'.

Assassin  
By JMK758  
Prologue

Monday, Labor Day: 1237 hours

Dawn Caldwell closes her last suitcase on Abby's living room couch and tugs it off, sets it with the other two in the middle of the floor. She flips back her long blonde hair that had fallen forward when she bent over. "Well, that's it."

They are a study in contrasts. They always have been and perhaps that is one of the reasons they had remained friends for so long. Even to clothing - Abby wears her black velvet 'vampire dress' highlighted with silver Halloween charms, though that holiday is weeks away. Her black garbed, black twin pig-tailed appearance is far removed from Dawn's light beige slacks, pale blue blouse and long straight blonde hair. The last time Dawn had worn pigtails had been with Abby's influence.

"That's it," Abby admits, trying to fight back a twinge of unhappiness. The weekend has gone so fast - especially when she spent most of it at work, attempting to solve five murders. The music from the radio on the tall black bookshelf changes, allowing her something else to talk about instead of saying goodbye. "Palestrina's 'Missa De Beata Virgine'," Abby identifies after six notes, "I've always liked that one, particularly the ninth measure."

"Remember all the times we played 'Name that Tune' with these?"

"Do I _ever_. I won most of the time."

"Half the time," Dawn protests.

"Only after you turned fifteen." They listen to the music for a few moments, but it can only be too few and it only momentarily distracts. They have to leave well before Dawn's 3:00 pm flight to Louisiana.

"Well," Dawn says, clasping her hands and looking about the black room, "pretty soon I'll be gone and you can have your noi– I mean 'music' - back."

Abby shakes her head, not wanting to think of her friend leaving again so soon. They'd looked forward to this weekend for so long and it had been broken up so badly by murders she doesn't want to contemplate, which had ended in a threat from the Government that had chilled her soul. "I think I'll keep this station on."

"Really?" Dawn's surprised.

"Really."

"Am I finally curing you of rock?"

"No way, it's just that when it's on … I don't know ... you're not so _far away_ then."

"I'm always just a phone call away," Dawn assures her, not wanting to be caught up in sentimental goodbyes. It's times like these, seeing each other for a few days each year after living practically next door for nearly two decades, that make partings harder to bear.

"It's not the same," Abby says, pulling her friend into a tight hug.

x

"No, it isn't," Dawn admits when they can pull apart, but she turns away before Abby can see her moist eyes, before they both start to cry.

"It's been great having you," Abby says, "I'm just sorry–"

"Don't be," Dawn tells her, turning back to her friend, "it was a great weekend, but …." There is no way she can get the murders out of her mind. She hadn't seen the bodies, and even though Abby was stingy with information she knew one man had been shot with an arrow, a woman's head had nearly been severed, another woman skewered with a sword…. She doesn't want to think of any more. Perhaps – no, definitely – it's better she had not seen any of the bodies. "Are you sure you can't tell me the climax?" she asks, trying one last time to wheedle the story out of her. She had been present for so much of the mystery, been privy to so many of the details, that being deprived of the ending seems so unfair.

"I told you - I can't tell you. It's a secret - and Gibbs told me how much the Government likes its secrets." In fact, her heart had frozen when he'd told her the story, the almost 'X-Files' ending he'd shared with her but which she could never reveal. She'll never tell her friend how the Army had come in and taken over, telling Gibbs and his team that if they spoke about the incidents of this weekend, the Government would 'regret losing them'.

"I can't."

x

"I just wish it didn't have to end so quickly," Abby says plaintively, "I barely saw you."

Dawn shrugs. "Well, maybe someday you'll come home," she tells her pointedly. It's been years since Abby has returned to Jefferson Parish. "We'll see each other again," she assures her. "I'd love to let my class get a look at you." Dawn thinks longingly of her new group of kindergarten children at St. Alphonsus. It will be so soon now; fly home this afternoon, school in the morning.

"They'll run screaming into the night."

"I don't know. I imagine some of them might find you pretty tame," she predicts with a teasing grin; "you'll just have to come down and find out."

"Count on it. I already have my vacation during Mardi Gras."

"Perfect, only … what'll you _wear_?" Abby's normal Goth attire is suitable for a year-round Mardi Gras, what could she get that would top it? "Never mind," she changes her mind before the 'Mysterious of the Dark' can answer, holding her hands up defensively, "I don't think I want to know."

"Then you'll be surprised."

"_Scandalized_ is more like it."

"You'll see. So, Mardi Gras," she swears, "and my vacation is already cleared with the Director."

"Mardi Gras," Dawn agrees. "And if you even _hint_ at a hotel I shall spank _you_ to a rosy blister! I _still_ owe you for that night I went out with Marty O'Connell."

"You were eleven years old and swore you'd be back at eight o'clock - not two-thirty! I was going _berserk_ hunting for you. You think I _wasn't_ going to tell your mother when she got home?"

"I couldn't sit for a _week_."

"Was it worth it?" Abby challenges, already knowing the answer.

"Yeah," she admits, "it was. But I still owe you."

"Careful, Sunshine," she warns with a smirk, "you're liable to find out I like it."

Dawn halts, shocked, trying to discern if Abby is joking or not. "You scare me sometimes, Vampirstein," she repeats, not certain she can tell her old babysitter that enough. "Are you serious?"

"You'll just have to wait for Bourbon Street to find out."

"It'll be a gas!"

x

Abby stops dead, slaps her forehead. "Gas! I forgot to get gas!" The 'Batmobile', her black convertible which doesn't resemble its fictional namesake except in minor decorations, had had a heavy workout this weekend. She looks around, there is still some refrigerated food she is giving Dawn to take back to her family, treats not available in Louisiana. They have to be loaded into cooling chests before the women leave. "We'll never make it if we - look, I'll run down, get to the gas station while you finish, then I'll come back and we can leave just in time to make the flight."

"Okay."

Taking her keys off the table by the door, Abby hurries out and down the three flights, berating herself for not having thought of this earlier, resenting now every moment that separates them because of her carelessness.

x

Dawn smiles, shakes her head. Her friend certainly has enough cause to be scatterbrained. After this weekend, if she had the responsibilities Abby did, she'd probably be squirrel food too. She heads into the bedroom - coffin room, actually - to make one last check when there's a knock on the door. She crosses the room.

"Yes, who is it?" she calls through the door.

"UPS delivery for Abigail Skiooto."

'Skiooto,' Dawn thinks with a grin. How badly could someone who works with the public foul up a simple name like 'Sciuto'? She opens the door.

The tall blonde man in the brown uniform holds a package and clipboard. "Abigail Skiooto?"

'Oh, God, he could play the lead in 'Rocky Horror!' Dawn thinks, sorrier now that she's leaving. "Sciuto, you just missed her, I'm afraid. You probably even passed her on the stairs. Can I take it?"

"I guess so."

x

The punch to her left eye is so swift Dawn never sees it. She's knocked backward, feels all sensation die. Her feet collide with her suitcases and she falls hard upon the floor as the door slams.

His knee comes down with brutal force on her pelvis, her scream of pain cut off by a vicious punch to her face, then another and another, the impacts slam her head back over and over onto the floor. She tries to get her arms up, screaming shrilly, blindly tries to ward off the punches which keep coming with merciless fury.

Then he's off her, his knee no longer pinning her down. She can't see as a hand closes about her blouse, yanking her up. She shrieks as she feels the blouse rip open. She's dragged to her feet, his fist slams into her stomach, doubles her over…

xx

Abby climbs the stairs to her apartment and as she makes the final turn on the landing she's annoyed to find her door open. "Come on, Sunshine," she calls, crossing the landing, "you were raised in a townhouse, not a ba–"

Her living room is destroyed. Chairs overturned, the heavy bookcase toppled, the television and coffee table are both smashed. The chaos made even more surreal by the blood that covers walls, furniture, everything. "Dawn?" She rushes in, calls frantically, "Dawn, honey?" She looks to her right and shrieks. "_DAWN_!"

The blonde woman lies on her back, topless, her body battered, bloody and covered by darkening bruises. Abby rushes to her, horrified to feel the coolness of her friend's skin.

She's not breathing!

Abby presses her ear to the woman's bare chest, finding terrible silence.

"No! Oh, God - _NO_!" Tilting Dawn's head back, she bends over her and, pinching her bloodied nose lightly, knowing the risk, she covers Dawn's mouth with hers and breathes hard, comes up to draw a fast breath and does it again. Shifting position, she puts her hands together, fingers interlaced between and below the woman's breasts and shoves hard - again - again, uses all her terror enhanced strength. "Come on, Dawn!" She won't allow herself to realize her fear or she'll break.

Bending down to breathe into her mouth again, she yanks her cell phone out of her pocket, flips it open and presses a speed dial button. Four breaths and she's back over her still friend, tasting blood in her own mouth from her smeared lips. Her body trembles as she drops the phone on the floor and shoves hard on the Dawn's chest.

//Gibbs,// the speaker answers.

"Get to my apartment _now_!" Abby cries, bending down to breathe into Dawn's mouth. "Get Ducky!"

//What's wrong?// the phone asks as she straightens to thrust hard into her friend's still chest.

"Get me an _AMBULANCE__!_" she screams frantically, her voice breaks as she tries to fight back tears of terror. "_NOW_!" She bends to force more air into Dawn's motionless lungs.

"Don't you _die_ on me, Sunshine!" she cries and thrusts with all her strength, tears streaming down her face. "_**DON'T YOU DIE ON ME**_!"

Chapter One  
Devastation

Dr. Donald Mallard is halfway into his desk chair when the video intercom before him comes alive. "Duck," Gibbs snaps, "grab your 'crash bag' and meet us in the garage." The image clicks off before he can answer. He's up immediately and hurries for the door, notes that Jimmy Palmer is already on his way out, snatching the black bag from under the table beside it as he runs. In cases like this there is one standing rule; 'go and do not wait for anything'.

Despite Ducky's usual practice of dealing with the deceased, he is a competent Doctor of the living and always has at the ready a bag containing emergency supplies for treating live patients. He runs out the sliding door, beats the elevator doors as well.

Gibbs and his team are in two cars, Ziva riding with him, DiNozzo and McGee in the other. Gibbs pauses at the base of the ramp with the left rear door open long enough for Ducky and Jimmy to get off the elevator. When they virtually leap in Gibbs stomps on the accelerator and launches them up the ramp in a shriek of rubber.

"What's wrong?" Ducky demands as he pulls the restraining belt about him, doubting it is up to the task of compensating for Gibbs' driving. Both cars launch out of the ramp like missiles.

"We'll know when we get there."

x

The MPs at the main gate know that when they see a blue Charger rocket toward the gate at warp nine, there is barely time to get the gate up and get out of the way. The closest Sentry is almost blown aside by the wake of Gibbs' departure. The second car, virtually on its bumper, can barely be distinguished from the first.

Gibbs doesn't ease his pressure on the accelerator even when they reach the city proper. His horn, locked in position to do the work of a siren, causes pedestrians to dive for cover as he weaves around cars while Ducky and Palmer consider their chances of entering the Pearly Gates. DiNozzo keeps up behind them - barely.

The inevitable happens a few miles into the city when they hear the strident sounds of a siren wail behind them. DiNozzo and McGee are better able to see the pursuing car. "Normally I'd run interference, but not this time," DiNozzo says, not easing up his own pace. McGee calls Police Dispatch to notify them that the unit behind them is in pursuit of Federal Agents, but there is no letup in the 'chase'.

They lead the patrol car on a loud and wild course through the streets of Washington until they scream to a stop in front of Abby's apartment house. Gibbs and Ziva are already in the building before the patrol car has stopped and Tony and Tim are left to hold back the rush with raised shields. Calls of 'Federal Agents' and 'Agent in Trouble' turn the pursuit into a dash for assistance. Now the two uniformed officers chase them on foot, but no longer to apprehend.

x

Taking the steps three at a time, Gibbs reaches Abby's level first and runs in through the still open door. He finds Abby to the right side of a destroyed living room spattered with blood, frantically performing CPR upon her half naked and bloody friend. She trembles violently, her efforts weak from unremitting effort. "Help me!" she cries.

Gibbs takes her shoulders, moves her aside and Ziva takes her, pulls her away as Gibbs takes her place. He shoves hard in regular rhythm with his greater strength and fresher muscles. He barely begins when Ducky, about to breathe for her, touches Dawn's throat. "I have a pulse," Gibbs stops and a moment later Ducky reports: "steady, regular, she's going to make it." He's cut off by a sob from across the room.

Abby, terror and grief drowned by relief, breaks in Ziva's arms, clutching her rival as she sobs, trembling violently from the strain of the intense CPR for so long. She realizes Dawn's heart had resumed beating but she'd been so frantic that she hadnt noticed. Trembling, she cannot stop crying, her muscles driven beyond their limits as she clings to Ziva.

Gibbs goes to her and when she sees him through her tears she breaks from Ziva, clinging to him, sobbing against his chest. He gives her several seconds of this, far more than he ever would for anyone else, then gently but firmly peels her away. He sees that her mouth and now his shirt are as smeared with blood. "Abby." His voice doesn't penetrate, her grief and terror conflicting with relief. He holds her at arm's length and shakes her once, giving her a powerful jolt. "ABBY!" He locks the laser batteries of his eyes on her startled ones, his voice powerful enough to shatter stone. "She is _going _to be All _Right_! _Understand_?"

She stares at him, shaken within and without, actually able to feel herself reassert rational control. "Yes," she gasps. He releases her and she's able to stand on her own. She manages to note with distracted gratitude that Jimmy has removed his black jacket and used it to cover Dawn's bloody chest without interfering with Ducky's treatment of her other more serious wounds. Looking behind her, she sees DiNozzo and McGee by the door, two uniformed Metro Police just departing.

x

"What happened?" Gibbs asks, taking in the devastation. Chairs, tables, the television at the right side of the black leather couch, the large bookcase at its left; everything is knocked down or broken. Hundreds of CDs are piled under the debris of the bookcase, the stereo and camera that had been upon it both smashed. Blood is splattered everywhere over the black room.

"I - I don't know. I went down to get gas - for the 'Batmobile'," she tells them shakily, referring to her black convertible, all the while unable to take her eyes off Dawn lying on the floor between Ducky and Palmer as they work to stabilize her. Gibbs steps in front of her, blocking her view.

"Abby, _Focus_." His voice, low but forceful, brings her back to the moment.

"We were - we were packing, getting ready to go to the airport. I realized I'd forgotten to get gas, went down two blocks, back a few minutes later, came up, found the door partway open, came in and found…." She can't continue. There is no need.

"What did you touch since you're back?"

Abby thinks carefully. Her fingerprints will cover this apartment like a blanket, her friend's less so, but if the assailant had touched any of the damaged or dislodged furniture….

"The door, not the knob, I just pushed it. Nothing else."

Gibbs turns to the three Field Investigators. "_Well_?"


	2. Rundown

Chapter Two  
Rundown

The Forensics Team arrives shortly after the ambulance has taken Dawn to George Washington University Hospital. Abby is 'stuck' in her apartment to supervise the search for evidence. She knows that she can't help her friend, but wishes she could go anyway. She longs to be out of her apartment accomplishing something and it takes Gibbs' drive to bring her mind back home.

"Is there anything you can see that doesn't look familiar?" he asks, hoping Caldwell's assailant had dropped something, no matter how insignificant, in the fight. The Forensics team will conduct a minute search, for now he'll settle for anything visible. Bookcase overturned, television shattered, one wooden chair reduced to splinters - he has not missed the blood on the remnants of the coffee table where Dawn had probably been thrown through it….

Abby looks around carefully, trying to focus herself on her job, to bury her anxieties in her work. "Gibbs, my living room is _smashed _- but no, there's nothing extra."

"That's her luggage?" he asks; pointing to the mismatched trio scattered about the room.

"That's all of it."

DiNozzo is about to make an observation about a teacher's salary but withholds it. 'See, Jeanne, I can be sensitive,' he thinks instead.

"Check those," he tells one of the Forensics team instead, "locks, everything. Be careful."

Abby feels a chill go through her as she realizes, belatedly, what Tony is saying. The possibility of a bomb, or worse, is too real.

x

"Who do you think would have something against you? Enough to do this?" Gibbs asks. There is too much here to have been a random attack; this degree of violence is personal.

"Well, let's see," she is about to tick them off on her fingers, "there's just about _every perp NCIS __**has ever put away**_!" Abby holds up her hands, trying to block his response to her anger, "I'm sorry - really stressed out here."

"Abby, she's going to be okay; Ducky's with her."

"I know. Focus, Sciuto, focus," she urges herself, clenching her eyes shut and trying to center. "Who got out that I put in?"

"We're going to run the whole list when we get back."

"Whenever I think of someone who'd want to do Abby wrong," DiNozzo interjects, "I think of our favorite Goth stalker / crime scene cleaner Mikel Mawher."

"Check him out; he's on the top of my list too."

"_No_, Gibbs, that was over a year ago and why would he hurt Dawn?"

"You were out getting gas," DiNozzo 'reminds' her.

"What I mean is Mikel knows me - his beef is with _me_. This must be someone who doesn't know me on sight."

"We'll still check every lead," Gibbs assures her firmly. "All right, who has something against you that doesn't know you? Who haven't you testified against in court?"

"The dead ones."

"_Abby_."

"All right, I'm good, I'm good. Suspects ... I've found evidence that put away a _lot_ of people, lots of whom I haven't been called to testify against. Then there's loved ones, families, friends; God, Gibbs, you're going to track a thousand!"

"Maybe not. Tempers cool."

"And plans get made," she retorts.

McGee turns to them from beside the bookcase. "The Klingons say 'revenge is a dish best served cold'."

Gibbs would reprimand the agent if he weren't right. "We'll work backwards through the case logs and include older ones if the perp recently got out." He pulls out his cell phone, punches in the Director's number. This is already taking shape to be more than one team can handle. Abby has, in her career, provided essential evidence for all the Washington teams: everyone has a stake in resolving this matter quickly.

xxx

There being nothing more that can be done until the Forensics team finishes collecting evidence they don't need the Forensic Scientist's supervision for, Gibbs puts Abby in her car. He will ride with her back to Headquarters, choosing to do so because of a very real doubt she's steady enough to drive on her own. If he sees one indication she is not up to it, he'll take the wheel.

They don't even make it to the corner before he makes her trade places with him.

x

Driving back to Headquarters, he knows that she would prefer to go directly to the hospital. But a call to Ducky goes unanswered and Palmer reports that the young woman is in surgery, so there is nothing Abby can do. Far better use of her time can be made analyzing what has already been bagged.

"She's going to be all right," he reminds her gently.

"I know." Palmer had given them a full report, the woman's life is no longer in danger. "Thanks for sticking with me."

He knows she means more than just driving her.

"I keep going over and over in my head who would want to hurt me like this but who doesn't know me from Dawn, but I can't come up with an answer. This is personal, that bastard _beat her to death_, and if I hadn't come back when I did…."

"Abby, you know better than to start with a supposition," he's not going to tell her about keeping her mind on duty rather than on her friend, but by the same token he needs her alert and aware. He doesn't want to be sharp with her, can't recall the time when he has been - other than that incident with McGee in her lab. "He came after you, you were out so he went after Caldwell. We have nothing to show he didn't know you on sight. He knew where you live, how many perps know that?"

"Too many," he looks at her, not at all pleased, "my number's listed, so's my address."

"Abby…." None of the Agents have listed numbers, not even 'Thom E. Gemcity'.

"Gibbs, I'm a Lab Rat," she cries, frustrated, "and up to now I was safe. Now my best friend is almost _killed_ because of _me_ and–" the screech of tires is her only warning to throw out her hands in time. Even with the belt and harness, she's almost slammed nose first into the glove compartment. She flashes back to when she'd done the same thing to Dawn but is still unprepared for the anger in Gibbs' eyes.

x

"_H__EY_," he tells her sharply when she looks at him, eyes wide in shock. Normally he would never speak to her so; this time he knows gentleness is not the best thing for her. This is a time for lighting the fire. "I need you focused on this job if we're going to catch this bastard, so if you can do that, tell me so. If you _can't_, tell me and I'll bring Jacobson back to your lab and you can sit with your friend until she's back in Louisiana."

"I can do it," she declares, her green eyes blazing just as he'd wanted, "I'm going to track this _bastard _and then I'll show him what being crucified _means_!"

"Fine," he sets the car back in gear, "then let's nail this son of a bitch."

xxx

Abby lives on the fourth floor of a walk-up, so DiNozzo and McGee begin their search for witnesses with the downstairs neighbors. They want to find anyone else who might have seen anyone enter or exit the building at the time of the assault; leaving Ziva to continue the investigation in Abby's apartment. They first knock on the door of the apartment directly below. After a few moments the door is opened by a blonde woman about forty years of age. She wears a blue housedress and slippers, which leads them to hope she may have heard something. "Good evening, Madam;" DiNozzo takes the lead, each showing her his badge and ID, "Special Agents DiNozzo and McGee, NCIS. We'd like to ask you some questions."

"What has he done this time?"

The Agents exchange glances. It can't be this easy. "What has who done?"

"Paul, my son;" they can place an East European accent; "for years, anyone with a badge comes knocking on this door, they want to talk to Paul."

"Well, perhaps we do. Are you acquainted with your upstairs neighbor Abby Sciuto?"

"Abby? Of course I - oh, NCIS, she works for you," the woman realizes belatedly, unable to miss the significance of their grim manner. "Is she all right?"

"She's fine, but we're investigating an incident in her apartment. May we come in?"

"Oh, yes, of course. Sorry, where are my manners? Come in."

x

Just as in Abby's apartment, the door opens into the living room, which is certainly more brightly and conventionally decorated than the 'Mysterious of the Dark's'. The doorway at the far left corner leads into a short corridor which turns right to run behind the living room, accessing a short corridor to two rooms, while to the right is the door to the kitchen. If the layout of the apartment remains consistent to the one upstairs, there will be another room next to the bedroom down the rightward corridor (Abby uses this as a store room) and the bath is at the end of the corridor, beyond the kitchen to their immediate right.

"Has anything happened?" the woman asks, disturbed by the Agents' grim visages.

"Did you hear anything this afternoon, say between noon and one, Mrs..."

"Alikos, Marjorie Alikos. No, my husband and I were out this afternoon, we only got home a little while ago. He's asleep now, he works nights."

"Would Paul have been home?"

"I think so."

Alikos turns toward the left door to the corridor, walking quickly. She does not want to shout for 'fear' of waking her husband. Before she can leave them behind, Tony takes advantage of her 'stream of cooperation'.

"May we join you?" If Paul is someone men with badges see frequently, Tony would rather interview him without his being alerted ahead of time. Fortunately, it seems the woman is well used to conducting men with badges through her apartment. She merely nods.

x

Following the woman through the far left doorway, it is just a few steps to the right turn, and the next set of rooms along their left; master bedroom, Paul's room and the bath facing them at the end. Even as they approach the second room, weapons close but not drawn, they can hear the muffled sound of music penetrating the door. Alikos does not knock, opening the door wide.

Paul lies on the bed along the right wall, head away from them so he might see the door. The sound comes from headphones, the coiled wire of which stretches the length of the room from the stereo on a shelf. The volume on the chaos rock music must be blasting at agonizing levels to be heard through the door. 'Not even Abby could stand that,' DiNozzo thinks. It is no wonder to them that his mother did not knock; even now he is unaware of their presence. He's ostensively reading a magazine, but his head jerking violently to the beat of the 'music', his long brown hair whipping about wildly. The magazine, devoted to multitudes of undraped women, doesn't require much reading. He wears a green tee shirt and orange shorts; DiNozzo judges his age to be about 17 and that he is in great danger of self-induced whiplash as well as advanced hearing loss.

Marjorie crosses the room, tugs the jack out of its housing, let's go of it so the tension in the cord whips it back to sail under the bed. "MOM!" Paul protests loudly; whether because of the headphones still on his head or because hearing loss has already set in, DiNozzo doesn't try to guess. The young man puts down the magazine.

"These men want to talk to you," Marjorie tells him sharply.

"What about?" he calls, making no attempt to remove the ineffectual headphones, only now becoming aware that they are not alone. DiNozzo takes out his shield again, but just moves his lips without any sound, compelling the young man to remove the device. "What?" At least now he no longer shouts.

"NCIS, Special Agents DiNozzo and McGee; we'd like to ask you a few questions."

"What did you do?" Marjorie asks sharply.

"I didn' do nuttin!" he protests as sharply to her, then returns his attention to the Agents blocking his door. "Didn' do nuttin." He still makes no attempt to sit up. DiNozzo takes an instant to do more than the initial cursory examination of the room. Brown dresser in the far corner, a workstation under the radio shelf contains a closed laptop and a couple of incidental items Paul is too far away from even if they were not beyond his mother. Nineteen posters cover every inch of the walls, all of lovely young women. The only piece of clothing is on one blonde, a bra - though it hangs open. There are other things in the posters as well which, while worn, are not clothing: handcuffs and ropes and blindfolds are prevalent. DiNozzo wonders how far a step it is from this to what had happened to Dawn Caldwell.

McGee, in his examination of the scene, notices that one of the very few books in the room is a copy of Thom E. Gemcity's 'Deep Six'. He doesn't wonder even briefly if he will be recognized, right now he is too concerned in keeping Tony's back as they stand in the doorway.

x

"Nobody said you did," DiNozzo assures him with that completely un-reassuring manner he perfected in the Baltimore PD. "We just want to ask you a few questions. Did you hear anything unusual between twelve and one this afternoon?" He doesn't hold out too much hope - considering it to be amazing if the kid can hear _anything_.

"Yeah, I heerd somethin'; sounded like a riot upstairs. I was in the livin'room when I starts hearin' screams; really wild shriekin', and bangin' and slammin' – sounded like the woman upstairs was getting the hell beaten out of her. She was screamin' for help - and I could actually _hear_ it every time she got socked."

"Did you call the Police?" DiNozzo tries to contain his outrage. The kid had listened to the whole thing - by the devastation it had to have taken several minutes. It takes a while to beat someone to death.

"Hell, NO!"

"_Paul_!" Marjorie exclaims, appalled.

"Why _not_?" DiNozzo can barely keep himself from giving in to the urge to throttle the little–

"It was really loud; the bitch was shriekin' her head off, furniture breakin', all bangin' an' screamin' an' crashin'."

"And you didn't _do_ _anything_?" Tim demands, outraged. Tony wonders if he's going to have to hold his partner back - when he'd rather join him.

"Why? I axed her out dozins of times, she never give me _nuttin_'." There have to be at least 10 or 11 years between them. "I figgered she was jus' gettin' what she deserved. It was really _hot_. By the time I finished jackin' off, it was quiet."

DiNozzo and McGee are never sure what they would have done had Marjorie not beaten them to it. Her hand cracks across Paul's face before she vents her fury in a torrent of blows and he tries ineffectually to cover up. DiNozzo and McGee watch the display for a few moments, turn and leave, letting themselves out of the apartment.

In the relative quiet of the outer hall, DiNozzo shakes his head in appalled wonder. Neither man has anything to say. Starting down the steps to the lowermost apartment over the main landing, they only hope for a less surreal interview.

Neither wants to tell Abby, knowing that her finding that Caldwell's beating could have been stopped would do no one any good. In time, they'll tell her what sort of monster lives below her - but later. Right now, they will bring her no added pain.

xxx

It is late evening when Abby finally makes it to the hospital, learning that Dawn has been admitted to a double room. Finding it and pushing the door open quietly, she is relieved to find her friend lying on the left bed, closest to the door, still semi-awake.

"Hi, Sunshine," she 'calls' softly. The blonde woman struggles to focus on her, trying to push off the effect of whatever she had been given. Abby is appalled and tries her best not to show it, but over the hours Dawn's shocking injuries have bloomed to full ripe. Both her friend's eyes are blackened, her face covered with bruises, red welts and bandages. The bruises cover her arms and upper chest as far as Abby can see above the light blanket. Her left arm is encased in a plaster cast and supported by a sling about her neck; her right hand is heavily bandaged, three fingers bound to a metal brace …. She wears a blue gown, the light blue blanket covers her to her chest, the bruises disappearing beneath it.

"Hi, yourself," she answers, her voice slurred. She looks around, bleary eyed. "What time is it?" Her difficulty in speaking comes partially from the injuries that cover her face, partially from mediations.

"Eight thirty."

Dawn allows her head to fall back onto the pillow with a sigh, "I've got to get _out_ of here. I have a plane to catch!"

"Sorry, that was hours ago," Abby looks down at her friend sympathetically, but Dawn wants no sympathy.

"Don't 'sorry' me, Vamperstein!" she insists, looking back up, "I have to get to work. I have a _class _of kids counting on me to be there in the morning. What happened?"

"I was hoping you could tell me." Abby tries to smile. The last time she had seen her friend, she had been dead.

x

"You got a delivery from UPS," Dawn recalls. "I noticed the uniform was an old one, he was wearing the brown one with the outline emblem instead of the new three-D one they use in Louisiana, but I didn't think anything of it; I didn't have the time. He said he had a delivery for you, he had a clipboard instead of the new electronic pad, but I just figured - I didn't figure anything. He asked for you, I told him you weren't home but asked if I could take it. He said 'yes' and the next thing I knew he was beating the crap out of me. I don't remember a whole lot after the first couple of punches."

"What did he look like?"

"Big – with hard fists!"

x

"Sunshine, please."

"All right, I know." She sighs. "It's just that I told the police everything I know and it took about two minutes. He was big, about dad's height." That puts him at 6 foot 1, Abby thinks. "He had blonde hair - you know, he kind of reminded me of Rocky from the 'Rocky Horror Picture Show'; the movie, you know? I was thinking 'too bad I have to catch a plane' - right up 'till he punched me in the eye. How come lately all guys are bastards?"

"Not all." Abby protests.

"No," she admits, "aside from that cute Medical Examiner I wouldn't mind examining _my_ body - just my luck couldn't I get _him _to check me out - there is _one _... but he's 'seeing' a Priest and shagging an 'Assassin';" she grins, "so I guess he's out of reach."

"Get in line, bitch; behind _me_!"

x

But there is little humor. "Are you sure you don't remember anything else?"

"Just that I have to get out of here."

"You can't." She pushes through her friend's outraged glare, "not right away; they want to hold you overnight for observation."

"If they want to look at me, they can take a picture - I'm _late_."

Abby sighs. "You have a fractured left rib and three broken fingers on top of that broken arm," she doesn't need to remind her, but feels she has to drive it in, "and more bruises than most stunt people."

"Great," she drops her head, disgusted, "just frigging _great_! I swear I'm going to join a Convent."

"You wouldn't enjoy it," Abby assures her. Though her friends 'the bowling sisters' don't seem to have it badly, a restricted life in black dresses is not for her normally ebullient friend.

"Two hospitals in two months - first raped and then beaten - I'll take my _chances_."

Abby pulls a small radio out of her bag and puts it on the small table beside the phone, bending down to plug it in. It's already tuned to Dawn's favorite Washington station and immediately the 'Anvil Chorus' begins in mid-strike.

"Thank you. And how apropos," she tries to grin, but it is hard.

"Think nothing of it."

"Just tell me something?"

"Anything I can."

Dawn takes a deep breath, tries not to let her emotions carry her, then changes her mind. "Why did that _bastard_ beat the _shit _out of me?"

x

Abby shakes her head, trying to smile while making tisk, tisk, tisk sounds. "And this from someone who would join a Convent."

"Don't do it, Vampirstein!" she demands in a burst of uncharacteristic anger. "My kindergarten class at Saint Alphonsus, _New Orleans _starts in thirteen _hours_, I'm in Washington with a broken arm, busted rib, smashed fingers, my body looks like a map of the fracking _Moon_ and I hurt in places I'd forgotten I even had!"

"I'm sorry, Sunshine, I wasn't trying to make light of it."

"I'll probably lose my job," she says morosely, staring up at the drop ceiling.

"You won't lose your job." Abby assures her.

"How would _you_ know?"

"Because Gibbs says you won't and he has connections Bush would respect. Right now you're delayed because you're working with Federal Law Enforcement Agents on a very important case. When you get back to New Orleans, especially with these 'souvenirs', you'll be a Hero."

"I don't want to be a hero - I want to teach kindergarten." She tries to make Abby feel the depth of her longing. She hasn't even met her twenty new students and had been looking forward to the coming morning for weeks.

"I'm sorry, honey, I don't know what to say. I'm just glad you're not dead anymore. You _were _before I started CPR, and that scared the hell out of me." She reaches out, taking Dawn's good hand below the cast. "I thought I'd lost you."

Dawn's closes her hand over Abby's and she regrets her outburst. She had been told she had been dead, it just had not sunk in when the Doctors told her. But when she sees the depth of her friend's emotion, it does. "Thank you – you saved my life." She tries to find something more to say, but that realization is so momentous there is nothing more that _can_ be said.

x

"Besides," Abby reminds her, needing to break the solemn mood, "I think you realize he didn't know you were there. That 'delivery' was for me. He didn't want to beat the crap out of you; he wanted to beat the crap out of _me_."

"Then that means _you_ would be the one lying here with a broken arm, busted rib and hand and the map of the moon on your body?" Abby nods. Dawn looks up at the ceiling, the better not to meet her friend's eyes, for though she would speak glibly her next words are the deepest of lies; "I can live with that."

Abby raises her hand, about to 'slap' her friend, but then her smirk fades. "Maybe not. The big question is: do you know CPR?"

"Yes," Dawn tells her, recalling that all teachers she knows of are required to know it, but feels her blood chill at the realization of what Abby is really telling her. It's enough to drive all the humor from them.

xx

"I called Mom and Dad as soon as the phone was hooked up."

Abby feels a stab of guilt, she should have called them - but she'd been so frantic she had forgotten them completely. They had undoubtedly been waiting for Dawn to get off the plane and must have been equally frantic when she had not. "What did they say?" she asks, ready to wince.

"Mom went ballistic - I'm surprised you couldn't hear her. When Dad found out the Doctor says I'll live, he was a bit more reasonable - he was only 'mad enough to chew neutronium'. You've probably got a message on your machine that'll melt the thing."

"Sunshine, I'm sorry, I should have called right away."

She waves the guilt off. "They'll be okay, but I've still got to get out of here and–"

x

"Excuse me," a white dressed woman says as she enters the room pushing a silver cart, "visiting hours are over." They had been over long before Abby arrived.

"But–" Abby is about to protest, but gives up, finding no point in it. It had taken so long for her to get away from the lab that she only had a few minutes with her friend, and had only made it to the room by first using her lab computer to 'hack' the room number from hospital records; then walking in in her white lab coat like she owned the place. But she knows that if she wants to come back with any good will, it is better to 'let discretion be her tutor'. "I'll see you tomorrow," she promises.

"I'll be here," Dawn assures her, looking with loathing at the materials on the silver cart.

x

Annoyed to have had so short a visit, Abby leaves without saying a word to anyone. Going down in the elevator and out through the main door, her focus locked upon her friend, she exits by rote, not paying attention to anything. The building front is well illuminated under the long awning running from door to curb, but the parking lot that fills the area beyond the access road that cuts across the front of the building is not. 'They really must invest in some lights,' she thinks, peering out into the blackness.

Sighing, not looking forward to hunting for the black 'Batmobile' convertible in a twilight lot with only an occasional working light, she leaves the overhung entranceway. As she crosses to the lot she hears a piercing shriek of tires to her left and turns to see lights flare blindingly. A car leaps at her in a blast of screaming tires.

Startled, caught in the glare of two distinct rows of dazzling beams, she hesitates - recoils a step to the right away from the intense light, unsure if she should run back or forward. In that uncertain instant something heavy slams into her back, drives her off her feet. She rolls out of the fall, training taking over where will had been lost even as a loud 'thump' assaults her ears, then another followed by piercing screams which almost drown out the shriek of overstrained tires and roar of a motor receding into the dark.

She's pulled up to her feet by a man she barely sees, her vision still clouded and uncertain with the ghosts of eight blinding lamps. She's unable to take her too-gradually recovering eyes off the people running toward the still and crumpled body upon the roadway.

Breaking away from the man who had picked her up, she hurries toward the unmoving body of a black man, finds him lying with contorted limbs, face down in a spreading pool of blood.


	3. Kill Car

Chapter Three  
Kill Car

Gibbs drives as close to the front of the hospital as he can get, walks the rest of the way past three television and six radio vans, the former of which having virtually turned the gathering night back into day. He finds Abby standing at the side of the lighted metal awning, talking to a uniformed MPDC Patrolman. The interview ends just as he arrives, Abby turns to him as the officer steps away. "He saved my life," is all she can say, her voice hushed.

"What happened?" She gives him a succinct summary, "Where's the body?"

"They took him inside, tried to revive him. But I was one of the first to him - I could see he was…."

"All right." There's no need for her to continue, he can see the end in her manner, hear it in her voice. He turns to DiNozzo, "Get the surveillance tape."

"On it, boss." DiNozzo doesn't even blink at how hard getting copies of evidence from Metro Police might be. Former Baltimore PD, now a Federal Agent, he knows how to handle the LEOs.

xxx

"Are you going to be okay?" Gibbs asks as he escorts Abby into her lab. Abby has told him that, through a long running association with her counterpart on the Washington PD, she's managed to get hold of her savior's clothing on an agreement of full mutual disclosure, having done so before Gibbs' arrival at the hospital. Gibbs wishes the FBI and the other Agencies could strike deals such as Abby and her counterpart can.

Of course, as to the other part of the 'deal', Abby definitely has an advantage: Gibbs cannot see himself also agreeing to go out on a date with Tobias Fornell.

"I don't know," she admits, "one time is too much, now someone tries to kill me _twice _- he hurts Dawn and then kills someone else! I don't even know who saved me. He saved my _life _- and now he's dead–"

"And you," he tells her, "are going to use all your knowledge and skill to make his killer pay."

She nods determinedly. "I'll get him. I'll _bury_ him!"

He nods, turns and walks out, wanting to find out what his team has uncovered.

"Gibbs?" He turns back, more in response to the tone of her voice. When he looks back to her, he can see the effect these attacks have had upon her. The vulnerability she would hide from all others she cannot hide from him. "Can I...." He waits, not wanting to anticipate her. She's shaken, lost, imploring. "Can I have a hug?"

He opens his arms, she steps into his embrace. For a long time they just hold one another.

xx

It's after 0200 when McGee looks up from his monitor. "Boss?"

"What've you got?" He crosses the space to see for himself.

"I have the records from the surveillance videos in the Hospital Security office. Fortunately they're digital, so I should be able to enhance the quality of the footage. _Un_fortunately, the intensity of the halogen lamps, which blinded Abby and made her hesitate, wash out the image of the driver from the forward images. They'll take more work to resolve."

"Well, what did you _get_?" He's in no mood to hear what the man _didn't_ get; this is Abby that was almost killed, while an innocent hero was.

"Good footage of the side and rear. They're fixed mount cameras, so the angle was again too poor to ID the driver, but he knew what to expect. Watch."

The plasma screen comes alive with the image of the entrance of the hospital as shot from over the front door facing the access road. The foreground is brightly lit by overhead lights that run along the. "There's Abby," the identification is unnecessary as the image of the woman in the white lab coat enters from the bottom of the screen. "That's Robert Johnson," he points to a black man standing near the end of the awning at the right, apparently awaiting a ride. Abby stops a few feet to his left, looking out at the dark parking lot beyond the access road. "I'm reducing the footage to one-third speed."

If the intensity of light is true, the lot is shrouded and Gibbs can well understand Abby's hesitation. She's probably giving her eyes time to adjust and considering whether she wants to traverse the darkness. Gibbs wishes she had called a cab.

In slow motion she steps out from under the lighted awning into the rapidly dimming area and gets no more than three paces before her body is nearly washed out in an intense glare. Her left side arms, legs and face flare bright white, her right side unrelieved black shadow; the shadow visible to her right. She looks left and raises her arms to protect her eyes from the dazzling beams, momentarily disoriented. She takes a step to the right, clearly uncertain whether to run forward or back, startled into immobility.

Robert Johnson, though surprised, is not immobilized. He runs up behind her and gives a mighty shove which sends Abby flying forward just as the black vehicle enters the frame.

Even at one-third speed, the impact happens at an appalling pace. Johnson didn't have even a half-second to recover from the transfer of his momentum to Abby and get out of danger. The black sedan, having on its hood four mounted lights set in a row and braced with three metal bars attached to the rear of the hood, hits him hard in the legs, twists his body over the hood and into the windshield, then over the top. His shoulder rams hard into one of the lights which holds together under the force of the impact, Johnson body flying upward over the unyielding metal. "Freeze that," Gibbs orders. McGee presses a button on the remote and the image stops with Johnson's body airborne over the speeding car. "When was the last time you saw something like that?" he asks, pointing at the row of reinforced intense halogen lights.

"Never on a sedan, just on some souped up trucks."

"Go back, slow." At slower speed than before, the car backs out of the frame, Johnson's body reverse-tumbles over it. "Stop." Johnson's head has just bounced off the windshield, which they can see is heavily polarized to admit almost no light from the side angle.

"That shot should have fractured the glass," DiNozzo says from beside Gibbs.

"Look at that mounting." Gibbs points to the section where the glass meets the metal frame.

"I've seen bank tellers' safety glass that was thinner," DiNozzo says.

"And with the bracing on those lights," McGee notes, "they didn't give a millimeter when they were hit, nor did a single bit of glass break anywhere."

"This is more than a custom job," DiNozzo declares.

Gibbs nods grimly. "That car was designed for murder."

x

After the fact, the plan is obvious. The assault on Dawn Caldwell, even if it had originally been intended against Abby, had the result of getting her to that hospital to be set up for murder part two. In this back-up plan she'd been lured to her death and her attacker had only to wait in this modified killing machine.

"Could you get any ID?" Gibbs demands. McGee presses a button and the scene changes to one filmed from a camera above the metal awning pointing away. Into the bottom of this frame rises the black sedan, and as they watch the one-third speed barreling car enters the picture, still churning a cloud of vaporized rubber from the overtaxed tires, followed immediately by the rolling image of Abby's unfortunate savior, his body slowing to a stop. McGee freezes the frame.

"The cloud doesn't help;" he points out unnecessarily. "The rear license is loosely covered with what looks like black tape, leaving no impressions. The rear window is as heavily polarized as the side; it's going to take time to break through, if I can raise an image at all. He knew what to guard against."

"All right, custom body shops, garages, any street perps with the skill; you know the drill. I want a list by morning – a _short _list."

xxx

Gibbs turns around, surprised to find Donald Mallard standing behind him. Usually that's his own technique - he's too wrapped up in this case. "Ducky?"

He'd expected the man to be home in bed. Metro PD has the body; this is their jurisdiction so he hadn't even called the Medical Examiner. Obviously somebody had.

"I heard about Abby's close call. I saw her on the news. How is she?"

"She's had the hell scared out of her - again. She's down in the lab, examining the evidence." Though the NCIS has no jurisdiction in the death of a civilian, no matter how close a call there was for one of their own, she'd managed to appeal to her counterpart at Metro to 'take some of the burden off his hands'.

Considering his onerous duties, it didn't take much convincing for him to share evidence with a promise of shared information in return; as well as an added incentive best left undisclosed, lest other Agents be inspired by Abby's initiative.

Mallard was not so lucky; the body had gone to Metro. When he had heard about the attack, however, he had called his counterpart and was able to obtain a faxed copy of the report. At Gibbs' desk Mallard reads it, spreading the gloom.

He commences with the date and time, then; "Subject is male Negro identified as Robert Johnson, 23 years of age, 5 foot 9 inches tall, 187 pounds in weight. Cause of death is blunt force trauma consistent with being struck by an automobile; determination made by NCIS Agent Abigail Sciuto, who witnessed the incident," he looks at Gibbs, "I'll summarize the details, they get a bit technical.

"Two breaks to the left leg, the fibula is broken into four parts while the femur has a compound fracture near the patella, which is also cracked. The ilium has a break that runs some 14 centimeters in a jagged path toward the sacrum, while the 7th and 8th left ribs are also fractured, with further fracturing to the 3rd through 6th ribs on the right side. The occipital bone also suffered three fractures on the right side while the apparent cause of death seems to be piercing of the lung by the 4th right rib."

He puts down the report, having barely glanced at it at the end, reducing the technical points into quasi-layman's language. "There you have it, Jethro; the last act of a selfless hero reduced to three paragraphs of dry fact."

If this is the simplified summary, what had the man actually said? "Don't feel too bad, Ducky, Mossberg's got a lot more cases to deal with, he can't put your style into all his investigations."

"I suppose you're right. It just seems so impersonal. Of course, every fact will hold up in court, but that is hardly the point."

x

Gibbs is about to go down to Abby's lab when she appears at his desk, as unusual an event as Mallard coming up to make a report in person. Something about the night seems to call for a personal contact among friends.

"Ducky, how's Dawn?"

He knows she's already seen her, knows her battered condition all too well. She's not looking for information, she's looking for reassurance. "She will be fine, my dear. I foresee a complete recovery."

She hugs him, vastly relieved. She'd known it, but still had to hear it. "Thank you, Ducky." She kisses his cheek gratefully - for so long everyone takes notice.

"No," he says when she ultimately withdraws, "thank _you_."

"Abby, what have you got?"

"A headache you won't _believe_," she snaps, her smile self-destructing, "I always get grumpy headaches when somebody tries to kill my friends." She raises her hands, cutting off any reply. "Sorry, _really _stressed out here."

"What did you find?" he asks, letting it go. Anybody else….

"I found microscopic flecks of paint on Robert Johnson's clothes, mostly elbows, knees, the usual spots you'd expect. I think the car recently had a paint job, I'll be able to tell with more detailed analysis."

Gibbs will order DiNozzo and the others to search for all the body shops that have done black work in the recent weeks. It's hardly an unusual task, though maybe Abby can find something about the paint that can narrow the search.

"But that's not why I'm here. I should have found a trunk-load of glass, its pretty hinky that I didn't. I wanted to ask why."

"Reinforced glass. That was a custom-built kill car."

Abby's next word is one even he hasn't heard in years and certainly had never expected to hear coming out of her mouth.

x

"Whoever attacked Dawn was wearing an old style UPS uniform," she declares into the dimness of the Squad Room after Ducky's departure, pacing back and forth in front of the Supervisory Special Agent's desk. "They're not supposed to be, but I've seen things in Salvation Army retail stores and the like, so I'm betting it's someone's old uniform. Whether it's someone who was a former employee or who bought the uniform second hand I _will_ find out!"

Abby continues her report of the evidence lifted from her apartment, at far more than her normal 33 record on a 45 turntable manner, pacing back and forth with an almost violent gait. "The Forensics team didn't find any recent fingerprints other than mine, Dawn's and a friend of mine who doesn't fit the description and wouldn't ask who 'I' am or _ever_ do this and all the blood in the room is Dawn's and Ducky didn't find any defensive wounds when he helped examine her in the hospital the guy just started whaling on her just pounding her and throwing her into furniture and beating her and didn't stop until she was dead and if I hadn't walked in when I had if I'd been just one minute later–"

"But you did walk in," he breaks in, trying to stop her diatribe and get her to take a breath. "She's alive, she's going to recover, but I need you to focus. Now."

"Gibbs, that car was meant for _me_! If Johnson hadn't shoved me out of the way I'd be laying on Ducky's table right this _second_. But _he's _in the city morgue instead of being home with his family and that's not right, Gibbs, it's not!"

"No, it isn't," he agrees, watching her come in and out of the lamplight. McGee, DiNozzo and David work by lamplight at their desks and she moves from one nimbus to the next in dizzying motion.

Gibbs is brought back to the night in his basement, the first time a maniacal stalker had set his sights on Abby. He had brought her to his home for safety and, left unattended for a period, she'd managed to get into his store of liquor, becoming quite drunk before he'd come downstairs.

This anxiety, he decides, is worse.

Gibbs watches Abby pace back and forth into and out of the sphere of light surrounding his desk, letting her pace until she would wear herself down with the rapid movements.

x

"I mean he saved my life! He's lying on a Police slab; he's being cut open because he saved my _life_! It's not fair, Gibbs, it's _not_! I mean first some sleezeoid beats up Dawn, and then he's waiting for me when I come out of the hospital but he misses me again and he hits–"

She turns again and suddenly Gibbs is in front of her. He puts his arm about her shoulders, pulls her to a stop, his hand firmly locked upon her shoulder, her other shoulder trapped under his arm, effectively immobilizing her. "You want to pay him back," he says with amazing mildness when he is sure he's captured her attention as well as her body, "you get back down to your lab and you find the car that hit him. Double check the DNA evidence from Caldwell's assault against anyone with the resources to soup up a 2005 or 6 sedan into a killer car. You find the scum that did this."

"Right," she takes off and he lets her go, but when she passes Ziva's desk she turns and, illuminated in the lamplight, her hands move in a complex pattern, a ballet of manual motion. He returns a similar set of gestures and she's gone. Gibbs returns to his desk.

"What did she say, Boss?" Tony asks.

"You wanna know, DiNozzo?" Gibbs asks sharply, "learn to read."

He won't tell them that Abby had arranged with him to spend the night in Headquarters. Those who cannot figure that out for themselves deserve a 'jump start' they will long remember.

A few moments later, looking at the clock, he changes his mind. "Go home." The Agents look up curiously. It's 2:30 in the morning. "Be here 0700, ready to tell me who did this."


	4. Krime Kleaner and the Bloody Ogre

Chapter Four  
Krime Kleaner and the Bloody Ogre

Tuesday, 0800, Gibbs and the team pull into the parking lot of 'Krime Kleaners Inc.' to find the one story building unchanged from the last time they had been here. Over a year ago, they had sought someone who had been harassing Abby, but they hadn't sought a murderer. Now they are more suspicious. It is more than just 'rounding up the usual suspects', this man cannot be trusted.

Mikel Mawher's morbid, obsessive love for Abby and his fantasized relationship between them had almost led to her death. He is, therefore, not their favorite person. There may be no evidence he's done anything wrong, but until there is, Gibbs is quite comfortable with the British principle 'guilty until proven innocent'.

Crossing the few steps to the door, they take in the many lurid offers of advertised service, such as 'twenty percent off on murder/suicides', 'free rewiring with every electrocution' and worst; 'group discount for all mass murders'.

On entering, they find the room unchanged in the past year plus; same counter to their right, same lurid advertising, but on the far wall is the framed image captured on their last visit. Guns drawn, scanning the scene, they'd thought they'd walked in on a double homicide.

"Good afternoon, gents," the black haired young man comes out from the inner office, "I'm running a Special this week; two – oh, no; not you guys."

He looks considerably different than when they had seen him last. Then Mikal Mawher was thin and mousy, now he is gaunt, his face resembles a fleshed skull. He's still small, hair spiked from too much mousse, a silver ring in his ear - that it's an engagement ring is particularly disconcerting - black mascara and eye liner matching his black polished fingernails; but now he looks like he's lost fifty pounds he couldn't afford to lose.

"Hello, Mawher," Gibbs says, "what have you been up to?"

"Some work, more play," he tells them evasively, stepping left to put his counter between them. It doesn't help, DiNozzo follows him around, boxing him in.

"Yeah?" the tall Agent asks, walking slowly and compelling Mawher to back away, "does your 'play' involve Abby Sciuto?"

"Abby?" he asks as evasively, backing further, "I haven't seen Abby in over a year - she can vouch for me."

"Why would she want to do that?" Gibbs asks, leaning on the counter between them.

"Because it's the truth," he backs into the wall and turns to Tony, who looms over him like a vulture, "hey, back off - come on, this is harassment - you have no right to be back here - customers are not supposed to be behind the counter."

"We're not customers," DiNozzo tells him.

"Darn right you're not customers," Mawher wants to stand up to the taller man, but his protests are weak and apprehensive. "I don't want your business."

"Pity, we have two crime scenes to be cleaned up. A young woman was beaten nearly to death in an apartment, and a man was run down by a car."

"Well, why didn't you say so?" he demands ineffectually. He still tries not to cringe under DiNozzo's invasive stare.

"The blood's all over Abby's apartment, the guy hit by the car was trying to save her from being run over."

"_What_?" Mawher looks frantically among the Agents, sees McGee and David near the door preventing any hope of escape. "Abby's _hurt_?"

"Abby's fine," Gibbs tells him, his voice deadly. "We want to keep her that way - that's why we're here talking to her least favorite psycho-stalker."

"Not me, haven't had the time to _think _about her, much less stalk her," he protests as ineffectually as ever. "I'm over her. My Psychiatrist helped me no end. Now I'm free, no obsessing, no love, nada. I'm just back from a cruise a couple of days ago and getting ready for another on Saturday."

"You take a lot of cruises?" Tony has never cared for the mousy sound of his voice, and he's particularly aggravated to have to meet him again. Standing over him like a preying vulture, he feels an uncommon urge to bite.

"Cruises, flights, I saw Portugal, Spain and France these past two weeks. Next are Ireland, England, Scotland & Wales."

"You come into a fortune?" Gibbs asks.

"Nope, goin' out of one; I figure a year from now I'll have seen the entire world, done everything I want to do and I'll be flat broke. I'm just keeping this place open to make enough for pocket money on the trips so I can be sure I'll have a good time. Why not, it's not like I was going to leave anything to my kids -" he scoffs sharply "- as if that's going to happen."

"Why?" Gibbs had heard some strange financial planning in his life, this is extreme.

"Simple," he tells them with a lopsided grin, "I'm dying."

x

"I'm HIV-Positive. I was the last time you were here, I just didn't know it. Doctors say with expensive treatment I could last. I say screw 'em.

"The Irony is it wasn't from sex, it wasn't from drugs, it was from the job. I stuck my finger on a needle and I was too busy to have it looked at. I was hurrying to complete a contract on time because there was a $4,000 bonus if I finished by 5:00. Funny, I lose my life because of making money, now I'm spending it like water." He looks the quartet over, finds little sympathy and more doubt, but he doesn't care.

"Hey, my shrink helped me deal. I'm dying and I know it. I admit it. I'm not wasting money on doctors or hospitals, why should I give it to those blood suckers when I can give it to Jet Blue?

"So you see, I have no time or interest in stalking anybody. That's work and I'm in the rest of my life to play. I figured I'd start with the Bahamas, South America was nice, Mexico was hot - the women ... well, 'safe sex' all the way. I'm up front, full disclosure, but I'm not poor, know what I mean? Hey, _I'm _dying - I'm not bringing anyone else with me."

Gibbs isn't sure he buys any of this, but he doesn't have anything that can be used to refute this story - yet. That will be DiNozzo's job. In the meantime, he signals the tall man to back off. He, however, leans close over the counter, fixing Mawher with a deadly stare, his voice all the more intimidating for its low tones.

"We're going to check every word you said - and if you lied about any of it, and you're the one we're looking for, I'll be back. Alone. You understand me?"

"Sure," Mawher agrees nervously. Gibbs signals the others to withdraw. The Agents leave, Gibbs, despite his relationship with Abby, trying not to feel too much like 'the Godfather'.

If he's wrong, he has just done something unconscionable. But if he is right….

x

"Just do me one favor?" Mawher appeals before he leaves. Gibbs stops, he can hear a last request. "I haven't called her or anything like that; been too busy. But would you guys, you know, tell her? And if she," he points outward, "wants to see me," he touches his chest, "well, I'm here," he shrugs a little helplessly, "at least for a little while longer."

"We'll tell her."

x

In the lot, once the building door is closed, DiNozzo turns to Gibbs. "You believe him?"

"I'm going to find out. He may be dying, he may be innocent ... in which case I'll apologize." He won't hear anything about rule 6. "If he's guilty, I'll make him wish he was already dead."

xxx

Abby had left her early, visited her friend in the morning before visiting hours and now, three hours after her return to Headquarters, she pulls open the door of her Mass Spectrometer, trying to keep her hand from shaking. She's scared, more frightened than she can remember being in a long time, and her sleep had been one nightmare after another. This is worse than before, when she had thought Mike Mawher had been stalking her but someone else was trying to kill her. Then she had been hunted but ultimately not hurt, not even by Mawher when he had tracked her to Tim McGee's apartment. Now someone is killing the people around her in failed attempts to kill her.

She tries to hide her fear from her friends, even while knowing she's failing miserably. She hadn't fooled Dawn and now, in the solitude of her lab, the fear is her only companion and her worst abuser. Unable to endure it any longer, feeling a true need for noise, she abandons the Spectrometer in favor of her radio.

'Devo' isn't her first choice, not even her tenth; but rather than looking for another station she turns the radio off in disgust, goes back to the Spectrometer and closes it in equal disgust.

She can't take this any longer. The solitude which is normally a great comfort is now her worst enemy. She leaves the lab, decides she'll take a page from Leroy Jethro Gibbs and go bother _him_ for progress reports.

x

"Abby?" Gibbs is surprised to look up from his work to see her standing before him, looking like she hadn't slept for a moment all night. He can hardly blame her. "How's your friend?"

"Okay, I guess. I called her three times this morning.

"It's ten o'clock."

"I know, she told me to stop running up NCIS' bill," she can no longer stand the distraction, grateful as she is for it, "Gibbs, tell me something - anything - before I go out of my _mind_!"

"We visited your old friend Mike Mawher this morning."

"Don't tell me he's–"

Gibbs cuts her off, pitching his diamond drill voice low enough so it doesn't carry beyond her. "I don't rule out anything or anybody. As far as I'm concerned, 'guilty until proven innocent' is underrated when it comes to you."

She feels a vast weight come off her shoulders. Gibbs has always been like a father to her, and she can see in his eyes the determination of a parent whose child is in danger. She comes around his desk and puts her arms about him in a tight, grateful hug, immediately feeling immensely safer. If she could, she would hug him all day.

He does not stop her, lets her choose the moment to pull away.

"What did he say?" she asks when she has taken a step back, sacrificing comfort and safety for decorum. A glance around shows no one has 'noticed'.

"He claims to be dying from AIDS, and to have become a world traveler."

"AIDS?" Abby is shaken - this is not welcome news. True she wants him away from her - far away - but not like this. "How does he look? Is he sick? What kind of treatment is he getting? There's this new drug, it's in the experimen–"

Gibbs cuts her frantic rush short. "He's not taking treatment - or so he claims. We're checking on that too."

"Because there's a good chance that Ter–"

"DiNozzo," he cuts her rush shorter, knowing she could go into a long and expert fifteen-syllable dissertation on the subject, "report."

x

DiNozzo had been waiting; attentive to and ignoring the private conversation until drawn into it. "Looks like he was telling the truth, boss. For the past five months his itinerary looks like Condoleezza Rice's. He gave up his apartment, looks to be living at the shop. Meantime he's seen more geography than Marco Polo."

"I checked his medical records," Ziva reports, not openly admitting that, with McGee's aid, she had hacked into secure private files, "he is telling the truth on that much too. He was diagnosed HIV+ not long after we confronted him; but by then it had progressed beyond the point where there is no reasonable hope. With treatment, he could last. With his refusal to accept the medications he is not likely to survive illness or infection. He cashed in a loan against his insurance before anyone noticed and he does not seem interested in paying it back. The Insurance Company could take him to court if they felt it worth the time and effort to sue him, but his AIDS will probably kill him before they could force him into court."

x

"I want to see him," Abby declares.

"Not a good idea."

"Come on, Gibbs, we _did_ date, and for a while it was good … until the bugging of my phone," she admits, starting to wind down, "… and the stealing of my mail ... and the slashing of my tires ... and the stalking ... and the Restraining Order ... and the breaking into my computer … and the web shrine… and the .... Maybe I'll just call him."

"In the meantime, you're on 24 hour guard; you don't even go to the _bathroom _without one of us with you."

"Gee, Gibbs, what will the Director say if she walks in and finds you guarding my stall?"

x

Fortunately, there's no time for an answer. "I think I've found something," McGee announces.

"What?"

"Well, thinking of the incident with Mawher put me in mind of something. In a way we're kind of lucky this has happened before; the stalking of Abby, I mean."

"Bite your _tongue_, McGee," she exclaims, "before I come over there and bite it for you!"

"No, listen," he insists as each of them tries to abolish that mental image, "remember we said there couldn't be that many people who would want to hurt Abby, that it wasn't like we were trying to track down all the people who want Tony dead."

"'Now that's a suspect list I wouldn't want to run down again'." Ziva quotes her observation from the first incident.

"_Hey_!" DiNozzo protests, not wanting to be the focus of abuse – again.

"Exactly. That time we were tracking those who had something personal against Abby, which led us to Mawher, a logical conclusion but a red herring. But I saved the records of my initial search for anyone who has it in for her."

"Very good," Gibbs commends.

"Yeah good, in a creepy, stalkerish sort of way yourself, McGee."

He knows she's less than pleased by the revelation, but "Of all the people Abby has put away, I focused on those who went down strictly because of her, who would have walked if she had been less thorough. It was a parameter of the search that they had to know about her, whether she testified or it was in the papers or whatever, but that they had not seen her. Not every defendant comes to court," he reminds them. "I've updated the list with their current standings. In addition to the revenge motive, they have to be in the area, be free from prison and have the resources to soup up a car like that one."

"_And_?" He's impatient to get to the end of this breathy preamble.

"Fourteen persons match the parameters."

"Very good, McGee." He's pleased; it could as easily have been a hundred forty. "Rank them and distribute. Make sure Ducky gets a copy of the lot; maybe he can profile our hitter.

xxx

"Boss, Metro Detectives have a hit on our BOLO," DiNozzo announces an hour later, putting down the phone.

"Which one?" They have several out.

"The guy who beat up Dawn Caldwell - the Intel's coming in now." With a few keystrokes he brings up an image of his own sketch of the suspect. It is a beautifully detailed rendering; DiNozzo may sometimes play the fool, but he's an excellent artist. "Caldwell described him as looking like the 'Creature' from the 'Rocky Horror Picture Show'; I was hard pressed not to draw Peter Hinwood; this looks like a cross between 'Rocky' and a surfer dude." There's a soft chime from his computer, announcing the reception of an e-mail, which he opens. "Turns out I wasn't far off."

Onto the plasma screen, next to the drawing he pastes a face almost an exact match to the image, as though the man had sat for the portrait, instead of it being rendered from a verbal description.

"Thomas Barkarian, small time muscle for a gang known as the 'Bloody Ogres', a street gang so small time they're just barely a blip on the LEO-dar. He's been busted for everything from selling crack to busting heads, but my contact tells me that without some brains behind them the 'Ogres' are going nowhere fast."

"I take it he's not the brains."

"Freshman High dropout. He spent so little time in school when he was there that few of his teachers had any idea what he looked like. Since then, he's been collecting notches on his rap sheet the way some people collect postage stamps."

Gibbs' attention is diverted to movement from the side. McGee is on his feet, pulling his shield and gun from his desk drawer.

x

McGee is grimly ready. This is their first solid lead on the one hurting gentle, loving Abby, and if this is the 'creature' they're hunting, he'll nail him to a wall. When he turns, Gibbs is in front of him. "What are you doing?"

"Aren't we going to bring him in?" He'd have thought the answer would have been obvious.

Gibbs' hand comes up fast, whacking him hard on the back of his head. "You gear up when I _tell _you to gear up, and not a second before."

"Right, Boss; sorry," he answers, properly chastened.

Gibbs gets close, his voice deadly. "You bring that photo to the hospital, you get a positive ID from Caldwell - and _then_ you bring him in. And if he has even a bloody nose when he gets here...."

"He won't."

If Gibbs had ever believed he would, McGee would not go. However, sometimes he feels a reminder is called for. He looks over his shoulder. "Ziva, you're with him."

"Right," she begins her own rapid preparations.

When he turns back, McGee hasn't moved. "Well? _Gear up_!"

xxx

"I don't want you to do it," Jimmy Palmer protests inside the storage room. Michelle sits up and looks down at him in sheer disbelief.

They're on the floor in the space between some stacked boxes and the wall, lying on several layers of cloth, their clothing abandoned on either side of them, their lunch break converted into a different kind of meal. But now she sits up, stares down at him, the fire in her eyes having nothing to do with the burning passion that had consumed her only minutes before. It was while they were cuddling following the intense secret encounter that she'd revealed her new assignment for tonight and he'd made this astounding declaration.

"Don't want me to do it?" She can barely imagine his having uttered those outrageously offensive words; "I'm assigned to Protective Detail for Abby Sciuto, ordered to it by Special Agent Gibbs and by the Director to keep her safe. Just _what_ part of that don't you want me to do?"

"I didn't mean it like that. Of _course_ I want her kept safe. I just meant - I just meant I'm worried about you."

"_You__'__re _the one who harped on my getting out of Legal, about proving myself as a Field Agent again, on getting out from behind a desk."

"I just mean, well, it'll be dangerous. Someone's trying to kill her and I don't want you hurt."

"Would you rather _she_ gets hurt?"

"_No_!"

"Danger comes with the job. And I am not a _Courtesan_. I am a fully trained NCIS Special Agent. I can handle it."

He slumps down. "This is all getting out of control." He looks up at her, trying to figure out how to put this right again, "I simply mean I love you. I worry about you out there. You don't know how I felt the day you went undercover after that soldier was pushed off the balcony, when I had to watch you get into that elevator and go after those slave traders. The day I saw you hurt at Wood's apartment and then in the Hospital, something just _snapped _in me and I don't think I can bear the thought of it happening again."

x

Her anger melts and she comes down to him, lies across his chest, their bare bodies pressed together, faces inches apart as they hold one another. Something had indeed 'snapped' inside Jimmy Palmer that day. To save her life and the life of an innocent victim he had shot a man to death, and he's been paying the price in tormenting guilt ever since. But she knows there is far more to that this time.

"Honey," she whispers, "I love you too, but this is my life, warts and all. I'm a Special Agent, and you know what that takes. I certainly don't want to get hurt, I'm no big fan of pain unless you're the one doing it," she smiles to take the sting out of her words and give him something new to consider, "but I think you have to ask yourself something. As much fun as we have, do you want a Courtesan or do you want an Agent?"

He hugs her, holding her close, wishing he could tell her how much he loves her, and how afraid for her he is. "'Chelle, I want you in my bed, not on my table."

When he sees the look in her eyes, he knows he has failed. "You have me," she assures him, looking down at him. "Always."

xxx

"Miss Caldwell?" Tim calls softly to the sleeping woman. A few moments later he tries again. The battered, bruised woman does not stir.

"You don't know a lot about waking a woman, Tim," Ziva observes with a near smirk, having quite a bit of first hand knowledge of him. She knows that lately he has far more experience, and skill, in getting a woman comfortable in bed rather than getting her up.

"She's been through a lot of traumas," he says as softly, "I don't want to scare her." He cannot forget the reason they had first been introduced in Clarkston Lakes, Virginia.

"You won't scare her."

"Just the same."

"I won't get any sleep, either." Dawn says softly, eyes still closed.

"How long have you been awake?" Ziva tries not to demand it, but she doesn't like to feel she has been played.

Dawn opens her blackened eyes, looking up at them. "Long enough to know I'm in the presence of a gentleman," she essays a smile. "It's good to see you again, Tim."

"Good to see you too, Miss Caldwell."

"Now you did agree you'd call me 'Dawn'; at least, that's what we said at dinner."

"Dinner?" This is the first she has heard of their going out to dinner.

"Dawn, we'd like you to look at some pictures," McGee says quickly, not anxious to get into an explanation of why he had met her without Ziva, and then had utterly failed to have mentioned it for several days. That he had escorted Siobhan O'Mallory at that dinner is something he _definitely_ does not want Ziva to hear. He'd assured her that there was nothing 'going on' between himself and his former girlfriend.

x

Dawn is instantly alert. "Did you get him?" she asks sharply, starting to sit up but defeated by her fractured rib, her broken left arm supported in a sling. Tim hands her the bed control, she uses it to raise the upper half of the bed a few degrees until she can see them comfortably without hurting herself. She'd been cautioned about trying to sit up. She will also be unable to use her right hand for quite some time until the bones in her fingers knit.

"We have a lead. We just need you to identify the man who hurt you," he removes from his black jacket pocket five 3x5 pictures, which he places one at a time upon her blanket-covered lap. All are blonde men, mid to late twenties, three who are in custody on unrelated cases, one is Special Agent Robert 'Leif' Erikson. Mixed in among them is the image of Tom Barkarian.

"This one," Dawn says definitely, pointing immediately to Barkarian.

"You're sure."

"I've had nightmares about him, I'm never going to forget him. He's the one."

xxx

"Tony was right," Ziva observes an hour later, watching Thomas Barkarian walking down his street clad in a black leather jacket over white tee shirt and blue jeans in the height of the September heat, "he is not the brains of the outfit."

"From what I've read, he would say 'it's a wonder that brain can generate enough energy to keep that body walking'." It is a misquote of Lex Luthor referring to Otis, but close enough. "You want to take him?" McGee offers.

"Oh, yes," she opens the car door, "just look out for 'Ogres'."

x

Barkarian continues walking up the street with the clear knowledge that, as an Ogre, he owns it and everything on it. When he sees the black haired woman cross from the left side of the street to cut a few feet in front of him and continue walking in his direction, he's so attentive to the way her jeans cup the cheeks of her swaying ass that he never notices the car pacing him a few feet behind.

He continues following the woman, enjoying her body as it moves so delightfully under her clothes that he closes the gap between them. The way she looks, she obviously works for it, but whore or virgin, it makes no difference to him. He follows the invitation of her swaying ass, certain as he tries to x-ray her painted-on jeans that she wears nothing to hinder him. It doesn't matter anyway, knowing that either way he can have a good time with this bitch. If she's game, he can show her a better time than she's had in years. If she's not into giving it up, it's no matter. They're approaching an alley a few dozen yards ahead. He wonders if she's a screamer.

He likes it when they scream.

x

"Hey, babe," he says as he comes up beside her. He can start out nice.

"Hey," she doesn't slow down, barely looks at him.

"You lookin' for a good time?"

Ziva can barely resist laughing. If this is his idea of an enticing opening line, he really needs lessons from Tony. But then, the kind of women he's probably used to dealing with probably does not expect more. It does, however, suggest a way to 'convince' him to do something wrong.

Right now, they have suspicion and, admittedly, a good eyewitness testimony, but if he can be caught in the act.... "Is that not supposed to be my line?"

Barkarian smiles; he'd had this bitch pegged. "How much?"

She looks him over. They haven't slowed down and the alley is getting nearer on their right. "You are a 'Bloody Ogre'?"

He puffs up. "I'm the _Head_ Ogre."

'This is just too easy.' Ziva hides her smile, gives him another appraising look. She is the only one who sees the car keeping pace with them. "Three hundred dollars."

"_What_?" He barely keeps his voice down. No street bi-

"Take it or not. I am a busy woman," she says, not slowing her pace, but her hand slides casually over her braless breasts under her tee shirt.

"Okay."

She allows herself to show her first trace of interest. "You got a place?"

He nods to the alley they're approaching. "Down there."

"Charming."

x

Tim McGee, unable to hear the conversation of the pair before him and unable to imagine why Ziva doesn't have him face down on the sidewalk, cuffed and hearing his Rights, feels his heart turn over in his chest as he watches her lead him off the street and down the alley. Stopping the car, he's out of it in a moment, his hand on his still holstered gun. 'I'm gonna spank her to a rosy blister!' he resolves angrily, following them.

x

Tom Barkarian cannot believe the audacity of this twenty dollar whore in demanding twenty times what she's worth! The only reason he agreed was that she's not going to walk out later with one red dime. Getting deep enough into the alley to be out of sight of the street, he shoves her against a brick wall. She catches herself as though she had been ready for his move, leans with her back to the bricks.

"Rough ones cost two hundred extra - but no hitting."

There is no fear in her. He'll _teach _her some. "I like to hit."

"Beat up any helpless girls since yesterday, Barkarian?"

Realizing he has been made, his fist speeds to her face - except she's not there. He's spun around, his wrist wrenched painfully behind him as his face slams into the dirty cement. Her knee's behind his neck as he hears a voice fill the alley: "Federal Agents - hold it!"

"Nice of you to join us, McGee," the whore says from on top of his back.


	5. Exposing the Inner Heart

Chapter Five  
Exposing the Inner Heart

"He makes me so _mad_!" Michelle Lee exclaims to Jimmy Palmer in the gym during her late afternoon break. Her bare foot slams hard into the heavy punching bag hard enough to jar him. Normally, when they can coordinate their breaks, they relieve tension in some secluded place with much more pleasant exercise.

This time, however, the tension she feels simply cannot be relieved in amorous endeavors. They're on either side of the tall punching bag suspended from strong braces in the ceiling. She wears a terrycloth sports bra and shorts and is relieving her frustrations by kicking the bag as Jimmy braces it.

"_Nothing _I do satisfies him -." she whirls quickly, delivering a roundhouse kick that makes the heavy bag shudder, her fire lending force to her attack. Had she connected with him, Jimmy suspects she'd have broken his jaw. "Not that I expect to _ever _satisfy him, but he doesn't have to make me feel like an _idiot_."

She steps in, hits the heavy bag with a series of punches driven by such rage it has to be painful, topped off by a high kick at face height.

"Honey, is it really that bad?" Jimmy has known Leroy Gibbs to be incredibly demanding, and if one looks up 'acerbic' in the dictionary the notation is 'see Gibbs', but on the whole....

He braces himself quickly to resist a series of right kicks, low, medium and high in fast succession, followed up by a left that almost knocks him back, then another roundhouse right kick that jolts the bag in his grip. The thick, heavy bag is designed to be barely nudged by a boxer, she's kicking with such force he has to fight being driven back with every impact.

He tries not to imagine what it would be like if she turned such violence on a living person. He's vastly relieved her personal contact with him is more amorous than aggressive.

She launches another series of devastating kicks. "I know - he wants - to solve - these cases - I really do - especially _this_ - but if he - didn't - make me - so _afraid_ of him -" she lets out increased frustration on the bag, each impact jarring Jimmy to his bones - "but every time - I'm around him - I'm so - _scared_ of him - I can't think - and it makes - me - look - like an _idiot_!" This declaration comes as the dénouement of a turning right-left-right combination that nearly knocks Jimmy off his feet. He's glad she's taking out her anger on the heavy bag instead of him.

"Well, have you ever considered _why_ he scares you so much?"

"Oh, no," she answers acerbically, "it never occurred to me to _try_!" Her kick, at the height of a very particular target, is fueled by such passion it drives him three steps back. She sets up for another, but he comes out from behind the bag, hands up.

"Hold on, time out."

"Why?" She had been ready and has to draw back.

"Because there'll be no more generations of bags, that's why."

Despite herself, she grins. He is so much the opposite of Gibbs - around him she cannot stay mad. "You're right, it's personal. I just can't help it."

"What can I do to help?"

She considers carefully, but has to admit the only possible answer. "Nothing." She looks at the clock. "And I'm out of time - I have to get a shower before I'm due to meet Abby in the lab. I'm to relieve Agent DiNozzo on 'Protection Detail' for the rest of the evening."

"Well then," he says, looks about to confirm they're still alone, "at least I can help you with the shower."

She grins, backs away, cocks her finger invitingly.

xxx

Tim McGee finishes his report on the Barkarian arrest when his telephone rings, "NCIS, Special Agent McGee."

"Hi, Timmy," a woman's familiar voice greets him.

"Shav!" he exclaims delightedly; then glances about the bullpen in hopes that his enthusiastic greeting had not been heard. Fortunately, he's alone. "How are you?" It is always a great pleasure to hear from his old friend. Ever since she'd accepted his 'arranged invitation' to join NCIS as its Chaplain he saw more of her, but still not enough.

"Fine; I'm actually between appointments and just wanted to call to say 'hi'."

"Hi."

She chuckles. "Well, I walked right into that one."

"Yes you did."

"The reason that I called is that I've been thinking about something that happened the other day that annoyed me somewhat and I wanted to clear the air between us."

His smile falls off his face. "What's wrong?" he asks uncomfortably, concerned about the seriousness of her tone.

"Well, it not really _wrong_, but something happened the other day that I wanted to discuss with you. You've told me a lot about your friends, filling me in on what to expect when I meet them, and I do appreciate the insights, but I ran into Special Agent Gibbs the other day and ...."

"And?" he prompts with a measure of apprehension.

"In all you've told me; you've never mentioned his 'conference room'."

"Oh shi – oot."

"It made me a bit uncomfortable. Actually, to be honest, it made me a _lot _uncomfortable."

"Shav, I'm sorry."

"Oh, I'm not mad, not at you, it's just that a little warning would have been nice."

"I'm sorry."

"I just wanted to clear things up between - well, I don't like to leave things brewing, it causes all kinds of problems later on. Like I said, I'm not mad, but perhaps you could tell me a little more about what to expect about this life of yours?"

"I promise," but then a sudden thought hits him. "Shav, on that subject, maybe we can get together and talk?"

"What do you have in mind?"

"There's a Fair coming up this weekend. McMillan Park."

"I know."

"Maybe we could spend a few hours catching up?"

He can hear the hesitation in her voice, "I'll try, I can't promise anything."

"We have 'weekend rotation' coming up, but I might be able to get away. But in the meantime, I was thinking, could I ask you something? Kind of a favor?"

"You're just racking them up, aren't you?" she quips, but after a few moments: "Sure, if I can."

"It's kind of a big favor, and I'm hoping I won't actually _need_ it..."

"So far it sounds nice and vague. Dare I say covert?"

"I'm sorry."

"What is it?"

"Shav, would it be possible for you to...."

xxx

"So this is your Bloody Ogre," DiNozzo comments, looking through the one-way glass separating Interrogation One from the Observation / Monitor Room. He's come up from Abby's lab on being informed that his 'relief' is on her way and he just cannot keep from looking in on their prisoner. "He looks like a Shrek Rejek."

"I want you to take this one, Ziva," Gibbs tells her after hearing her report. It will do the man good to be interrogated by the woman he thought was an easy mark.

"My pleasure," she tells him, looking at the man seated at the table, already stewing.

He takes a drink of hot coffee. "Try not to break anything."

She wants to assure him she won't break anything that won't eventually heal, but seeing the look on Gibbs' face, she decides a nod of agreement is a better reply.

She goes out the door, traverses the short distance between the two rooms. The woman that opens the Interrogation Room door is not the agreeable whore who had led Barkarian into the alley.

x

When she walks into that smaller room she decides Peter Hinwood was a far better looking 'Rocky Horror'. This man's soul is etched upon his face and it's not a pretty one. "I want a lawyer," he demands before she even closes the door. "This is entrapment."

She takes a seat on the other side of the table, her back to the large mirror. "This isn't Vice."

"Damn right it's not. Vice decoys are a hell of a lot prettier."

Ziva only smiles a maddening smile. All he has to do is keep heaping on reasons for her not to like him, it'll make the coup-de-grace that much more satisfying. "You'll have noticed this is not a police station either. It is a Naval base."

"So?" he tries to put up a defiant front, but he's more used to the pansies in the Police station.

"That means this is _Military_ law. When was the last time you heard of anyone coming out of Navy custody? Stockades, Interment Camps, _Guantanamo Bay_ ... you've heard of all those detainees we've had since the start of the war. Heading on six years now they're 'detained'. Ever hear of anyone getting _out_? No. And would you like to know why? It's because there _are_ no lawyers here. There's no judge, no jury, no _witnesses_. None. This is NCIS. Abby Sciuto is NCIS. There's a whole _building_ full of people who know and love Abby Sciuto, the woman whose apartment you were in yesterday; who have a real reason to make sure you do not see daylight ever again. So it's just you, me and your telling me why you beat a twenty-two year old woman to death."

"Screw you."

Ziva stands up, turning casually toward the large mirror, and as she does she allows Barkarian to see the long black handled knife she draws from her belt. She turns back, casually flips it up in the air where it spins several times before she catches it, not even looking. Again, a little higher, spinning faster, catching it by the blade while keeping her deadly dark eyes on his. The next flip is sharper, the knife twirls faster, slices the air with sharp swishes as it ascends nearly to the ceiling and comes down again. The black handle slaps into her palm, still without her taking her deadly eyes off Barkarian. The next time she snaps her wrist so the blade spins almost too fast to be seen, glints off the lights, the swishing louder as it slices through the air, twirls over her right shoulder behind her and she reaches back past the arc of its flight. The handle slaps into her palm and she brings the blade smoothly down and then up toward him, the lights gleaming on the sharp steel until it points at his right eye.

"Wrong answer."

xx

"Hard to believe," Ziva grants as she meets her teammates in the Observation Room after two Agents have escorted Barkarian to a Holding Cell. "I've dealt with Hamas, Syrians, Afghans, Iranians, Chechnyans; terrorists of all flavors and I understood them all better. You have had a man have his own blind daughter and his wife kidnapped and nearly killed for two million dollars and when I read about him I even understood him better. For a thousand dollars cash he put on a UPS uniform and went to Abby's apartment to beat her until she died. He does not care about her, who he actually hit or the guy who hired him, why he did it or anything else. Just the thousand. For one thousand dollars he beat Dawn Caldwell until she died."

Neither man has an answer for her.

"He's not even smart enough," DiNozzo gripes, "to have a description of the guy who hired him."

"Oh, he knows. He'll just take more work," Gibbs assures him, finishing his coffee. "We'll hold him on ice while Ziva practices more knife tricks."

xxx

Abby is finishing up in her lab when Michelle Lee walks in. "Hi, Abby." They are on far better terms than when they had started out so many months ago; mostly from the sharing of numerous confidences. The first one was unavoidable: Abby had discovered Michelle and Jimmy's secret love affair. The later ones were by choice.

"Hi. How's tricks?"

"Magical," Michelle admits; "I'm to be your watchdog for the night. Special Agent Gibbs ordered me not to take my eyes off you for one minute."

"I hope you're prepared to be shocked."

Actually, Abby is grateful for the distraction her friend will provide. When she's distracted, she doesn't have time to think of how scared she is. Then she sees something that distracts her quite well.

"What's that?" she points to the silver jewel suspended from a thin silver chain about the young woman's neck, steps closer for a better look.

The charm is barely a half of an inch in diameter, small enough to be quite discreet. Had the light not caught it properly for a brief moment she would never have noted the disinction that caught her attention. The small symbol is a five pointed star within a circle, a symbol of Wicca. Following the case of the murdered Petty Officer Michael Kane, Michelle had given up keeping that aspect of her life private, at least among those she works with. Abby had seen the tiny charm before, had assumed that was all it was, but not until now had she been close enough to _see_ it. Set in the inverted pentagon formed by the five filaments of the star is a Christian cross. "Jimmy had it made for me," Michelle explains, surprising Abby not at all.

"Okay," Abby declares, "this time I've _gotta_ know: are you a Christian or a Pagan?"

"I'm a Christian Pagan ... or is it a Pagan Christian? I haven't quite worked it out in my own mind yet."

"How can you be both? Aren't they sort of mutually exclusive?"

Michelle shakes her head. "I've seen ... I've _experienced_ a lot in my life that supports both, experienced things I can't account for without acknowledging that _both _have something about them that are true. And I was raised Episcopalian, became Wiccan by choice, but I believe as much in the Triune God as in the Goddess in all Her aspects too."

"Incredible."

"Not really. A Darwinian believes we're the product of Natural Selection, the convergence and mutations of cells. The Creationist believes there's a Higher Power controlling things. If _they're_mutually exclusive, which one is right?"

"I believe they both are."

"Well," Michelle concludes with a satisfied smile, "same answer."

x

"How _is_ Jimmy?" Abby asks; the fact that he had given Michelle this gift allowing her a segue. She's the only one who 'officially' knows about the Agent's clandestine trysts.

The smile drops hard from the Asian woman's face. "Not well. Ever since that morning in the hospital he's not the same. He tries to hide from people what he's going through, but I can see it in him as soon as I walk into the room." She'd known how haunted he still is during their first encounter this morning, trying to fight demons that cannot be exorcised alone. She'd tried to get through to his fear, even if she couldn't get him to talk about it.

"Do you two talk about it?" Abby asks, grateful to get her thoughts off her own troubles and onto someone else's, no matter how bad they are.

"We do, but we don't. I don't know. I try to draw him out, or to help him. I just can't seem to find the right words."

"There aren't any. He shot Franklin twice in the back and killed him - and believes he interfered in his getting medical help, even though it would _not_ have saved him." She'd read the Autopsy report, even had Ducky's interpretation of it. The seconds lost in Jimmy's interrogating the dying man had meant nothing to Franklin's hopeless survival. "That's a whole barge-load of guilt. You can tell him what good came out of it until you're blue in the face, it's not going to change how he feels until _he_ does."

"What can we do?" she asks longingly, needful of any help.

"Have you suggested talking to Mother O'Mallory?"

"Until I was blue in the face."

"Have _you_ talked to her?"

"That's my next try. Maybe if I can talk it out with her, I can figure out some way to get him to talk - or come with me." She looks at the clock, anything to avoid any more of this discussion. "Can we go?"

"Ready when you are." They pause at the refrigerator on the way out, Abby retrieving her '_Dark Shadows_' lunchbox, "I want to stop at the hospital to see Dawn."

Michelle recalls her own unpleasant hours in that place. "Visiting hours are over."

"No problem," she smiles, holding up the colorful metal box with the distinctive image of the vampire Barnabas Collins on each long side, "I'll tell them I'm delivering specimens."

xxx

"How are you, Sunshine?" Abby asks softly when she and Michelle enter the room. It's well after Visiting Hours, but they have learned very well that if you walk into a place like you own it, you can get away with much, especially when the Nurses are overworked or distracted.

Dawn looks at the pair, uses one remote control to turn off the television set in the wall opposite her, then another to raise the upper half of the bed so she can see them better. "Okay, I guess. Not a lot to do but nap and watch TV. Dr. Peterson says I can probably get out of here in another day or so, but the way they've bound my ribs I won't enjoy it." She doesn't want to press the fact that she cannot stay in Washington, Abby already knows this thoroughly. "What's happening on the outside?"

It is a question Abby doesn't want to answer. "The gang is running down leads on whoever's behind this. Someone tried to run me down as I was leaving yesterday."

"_Holy Hell_! Are you all right?"

"I'm fine - but the guy who saved my life isn't. He was killed."

"Oh, Abby, that's horrible!" She doesn't have to imagine the guilt her friend feels, she can see it in her eyes.

"They got the guy who beat you up, though."

"Great! When can I have him?"

Abby shakes her head, "You wouldn't want him. Stupid Neanderthal, no conversation."

"I don't want him for long."

"He's in a pen until he talks - at least to tell us something useful. He was hired to kill me, someone gave him $1,000."

"That's what we're worth now?" she asks bitterly, then looks at Lee, who she's never seen before. "Why do I have the feeling you're more than just a buddy?"

"I'm her bodyguard for the night."

"Bodyguard?" She turns back to Abby. "You said they got him."

"But not the one who hired him. It's not over yet."

"Shit - come back to Louisiana with me," Dawn urges.

"I've never been more tempted." Whatever else might have been said is cut off by the entrance of a woman in white. "I know, I know, we're going."

xxx

"Well, here it is, 'home sweet home'," Abby announces as she lets Lee in. The living room immediately within the door of the 4th floor walkup has not been reassembled. She'd spent the night in an unused office at Headquarters, and nothing had been done to get rid of the blood. Unfortunately, the only specialty place to do the job professionally being 'Krime Kleaners', she's left to do the job by hand herself.

She catches Michelle's eyes flicking about the black room, but the woman says nothing. She doesn't have to, the marks speak for themselves. "I'd never thought it would be so useful to paint everything black."

"It'll go faster with help," Michelle offers.

x

In a matter of minutes both women, clad in barbeque aprons over their clothes, hands encased in long thick rubber gloves, have taken parts of the room, scrubbing blood from walls and furniture - at least such furniture as can be salvaged. The television, coffee table and one chair are shattered into splinters..

When they hoist the tall bookcase back into place against the wall, clearing the hundreds of CDs, the stereo and speakers back to the shelves to be sorted later, they find more blood on the floor and realize Dawn had been under it when the heavy case had fallen. They must photograph and document this blood before they may continue.

Abby is grateful for the woman's presence even more than her valuable help. Michelle and Ziva have been assigned to be her constant companions when off duty, but of the two Abby prefers Michelle's company. She has no doubt that Ziva agrees with this summation in light of their ongoing rivalry for the affections of Tim McGee. She doesn't know if the Israeli Assassin is able to separate personal from professional life enough for them to spend a comfortable night together, or at least share the same space for a night without trying to kill each other, but she really doesn't look forward to finding out. She hopes Gibbs and the gang can solve the mystery quickly.

"How are you holding up?" Michelle asks, startling her.

"I'm scared," she admits, hardly having to say so from the way she'd jumped in her skin when Michelle spoke. "And I'm mad as hell. It was bad enough that this all already happened. I still have nightmares from the last time when I thought Mike Mawher was stalking me, instead of it being a weasel embezzler;" despite herself, Michelle giggles and even Abby is forced to acknowledge the humor. "But now _this_ bastard is hurting other innocent people. And he's not even doing it himself - he's hiring people so we don't get any evidence of him - keeping his lily white hands clean._ I want to_–" She forcibly stops herself, not allowing herself to give in to the thought.

"It's okay to be angry."

"I'm not an angry person," Abby insists, trying to push back her feelings; "neither are you, I think."

"No," Michelle admits, putting extra effort into scrubbing the wall before her, not able to forget her anger in the gym, having been picturing the towering Special Agent before her. It had made the low kicks particularly satisfying.

Surrounded as they are by the evidence of brutality, it's hard for either of them to put aside their feelings. Michelle thinks of the bruised and battered blonde they'd left in the hospital and tries to imagine what went through the woman's mind in those terrifying minutes. Looking at the bloody walls and smashed furniture, she decides she doesn't want to know.

"Anger is one of the few luxuries I'm training myself to do without." She wishes she did not have to privately admit to utter failure.

"How's that?"

"When you practice Wicca, anger only works to hurt you: the old 'what goes around comes around'. We believe in the 'Law of Three': whatever you do, for good or evil, comes back at you three fold. Or, as someone once said," her voice changes, becomes wobbly and odd, that of an ancient, diminutive green Jedi Master; "'anger, fear, hatred, the Dark Side are these. Once started down that path, forever will it control your destiny'."

Abby cannot help but giggle at the atrocious imitation, but the lesson conveyed is not funny. "You hungry?" she asks instead.

"Starving."

x

She's about to order 'take-out', but then stops, suddenly finding herself in a PC quandary. To her, 'take-out' is the 'Great Wall Chinese' on the corner, but considering the Asian woman with her, she does not want to seem stereotypical. "There's a Greek place a few blocks from here, they make great souvlaki."

"That'll be fine."

Pulling out her cell phone, she makes the order and they continue their work. "What have you heard from Megan Wood?" Abby knows Michelle, with her professional connection to the would-be witch, has kept in touch with her since the incident in the hospital and has shared some of this with her new friend. There are few with whom she can open up to about the Mystical aspect of her life, among other things.

"She's getting out of the hospital soon, but it will still be a quite while before she's fit for work. Her jaw is still wired shut."

"Does she still want you to help sponsor her for membership in your Coven?"

"She's not sure, which is just as well, because I'm not either. It's not my decision, anyway, but I'm uncomfortable with the idea of bringing her in. Her judgment's not so good."

"As Gibbs would say; 'ya think?'"

x

They work in comfortable silence for a while longer, making good progress until Abby's doorbell rings. She goes to the intercom, "Hello?"

"Olympus delivery."

"Come on up, 4th floor." She presses the buzzer, then goes for her bag even as they strip off their Barbeque aprons and rubber gloves.

"This one's mine," Michelle intercepts her at the door, her bag open.

"You don't have to do that," Abby protests.

"You can get the next one then. I always have expensive tastes on my second visit."

"Deal."

The expected knock comes at the door and Michelle opens it.

She's startled by the gun in the man's extended hand, the barrel pointing at the center of her forehead. The shot is deafeningly loud, reverberates and echoes through the walkup and living room. The impact knocks Michelle off her feet.


	6. Impressions

Chapter Six  
Impressions

Abby pushes herself up off Michelle's body as the heavy running footfalls recede down the stairs. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah!" Lee assures her, her left side hurting from the crash to the floor. She's scared out of her mind and trying not to show it.

"Son of a _Bitch_!" Abby cries, furious as she leaps off the woman and charges out the door. Michelle is on her feet in an instant, clutches her purse and runs after her.

Abby is half a flight ahead. "SCIUTO!" Michelle yells commandingly, her shout filling the hall even over the slamming of the front door down below. The unexpected yell halts the furious woman long enough for Lee to catch up and shoulder her way past on the stairs, digging her hand into her purse. "_I'm_ the one with the damn _gun_!"

Michelle leads the charge down to the front door where she stops and Abby almost slams into her back. The enraged woman is about to yank the door open despite the obstacle before her when Michelle grabs her hand. "Get _back_!" she shoves Abby back several paces, takes hold of the doorknob and crouches down as low as she can, her body tucked to the side, looking back meaningfully. Abby, realizing, imitates her as Michelle quickly opens the door.

The bullet pulverizes the plaster wall over their heads and she slams the door. A moment later there is a shriek of tires outside, while above their heads every door in the building opens.

Abby shakes her head. "I just know my rent's going up now."

xx

They return to her apartment, giving empty reassurances to the tenants in the first two apartments. Paul Alikos is particularly interested in what had happened, but the women give him nothing.

Upstairs again, they lock the door. Michelle goes immediately to the hole in the far side of Abby's living room, over the couch, grasping her arms in an effort to keep from shaking. It's all she can do to contain her trembling. She is shaking from fear, shaking from rage, and tries very hard to stop both of those feelings. "Have you got a camera?" 'Focus.' she thinks, 'Focus on work. Focus on procedures, don't think about the gun, the bullet, my de–'

"It was in the bookcase; now its landfill."

She reaches into her purse, but she recalls that in the stress of the moment since Abby had tackled her she had forgotten something. "Abby?"

"What?" Her own voice is deeply stressed.

"Thank you."

Abby hugs her, "I'm just glad you're not hurt."

"Night's still young," Michelle counters, trying not to feel the fear she struggles to bury, to disguise, leaning back so she can look at the taller woman.

"Don't even say that."

They disengage, both of them uncomfortable in the knowledge that the situation is far from over. It has only gotten worse.

x

Michelle pulls her camera phone out of her purse, aims it at the wall and gets several close shots of the hole made by the bullet.

"Don't call anyone yet," she advises, seeing Abby reaching for the 'batphone'.

"Why?"

"I want to try something before anyone gets here." From her purse she takes out a silver nail file, uses the sharp end the dig into the wall, enlarging the hole slightly in her efforts to remove the bullet from the black painted sheet rock. Abby hands her a long set of tweezers, and eventually the small piece of metal comes out into her hand.

"What are you doing?"

Michelle's almond eyes meet her green ones, "Can you keep a secret?"

"Yes."

"So can I." She focuses on the lump of metal in her open palm, then smiles. "Sorry, a little joke to ease the tension."

"Too much tension, too little joke."

"Sorry," she focuses on the bullet again, "it's really no secret, what I'm going to try to do absolutely anyone can do." Concentrate on the teaching, the lesson, don't think about the gun, the bullet. "Everything that lives gives off certain 'impressions', and they linger on what is touched. Anyone can do this - it's just a matter of being sensitive to what's around us. People train themselves to _ignore_ sensation, to ignore awareness. What they should do is train themselves to _be_ aware of it, to learn how to distinguish between levels of awareness and interpret what they sense. I started young, but really took classes in it as an Elective in College; and Awareness Training in Wicca helped no end. You train yourself to be aware of what's around you, rather than shutting it out. If you really try, and pay close attention to what you feel, you can do something like this...."

Michelle focuses on clearing her mind, to forget having looked down the barrel of a gun at her own death. That this is an incredibly difficult thing to do only makes her work harder in controlling her emotions, which even now threaten to break. She has only one chance at this. Once the other Agents arrive her opportunity will be gone. Later is the time for perspiration, now is the time for inspiration.

x

Taking a deep breath and letting it out as slowly as she can, she concentrates upon lowering the psychic shields every human being has to help them cope with billions of impressions per day, to let herself feel what she normally blocks.

Rather than formal magic, this is something anyone could do with adequate training, as she tried to explain and will try to teach Abby – later. Right now she needs to concentrate.

She feels her barriers give way, becomes aware of Abby nearby, of the room, of the other people in the building. She concentrates on filtering out the other people, filtering out the room, filtering out Abby. The awareness is what she needs to focus on, and as she relaxes further she's able to become aware of the bullet.

With the training she had received in psychic sensitivity she focuses her senses upon the bullet in her hand, knowing that anyone who had handled it before her left some trace upon it which is measurable, quantifiable and real; measurable not in a test tube but in the mind. The trace she feels is feeble.

And it is not what she had expected.

x

Opening her eyes again, she drops the bullet into the plastic jar Abby holds in her hand.

"So, who did it?"

"It doesn't work like that," Michelle tells her. "As I told Jimmy, I can't walk into the room and tell you who did it and how. This is impression, _not_ clairvoyance."

"So, what are you impressed with?"

"The one who is gunning for you wants you dead, but the one who shot at me doesn't care."

"_Wait!_" this is too much and she explodes; "'doesn't _care_'? 'Doesn't _CARE'_? That's the _best_ you can do?"

"That's a lot," Michelle maintains.

"_What's_ a lot?" Abby demands.

"Abby," she tries to get through the woman's rage, "to want someone dead is a very passionate, personal thing. Have you ever _hated_ someone, hated someone so _much_ that you just want to choke the life out of him?"

"Once or twice," she admits; her own passion fading as she begins to understand what her friend is saying, even as she updates the list to whoever is doing this.

"The one who loaded that bullet, who actually touched it, is an agent. There's no passion in him. He doesn't want you dead; he just came here to kill you."

Abby stares at her, unblinking, as the full implications of this sink in. "I really have to sit down now."

xxx

Abby still hasn't recovered, any more than Michelle has from her near death experience, when the Agents, having still been working at Headquarters, arrive at the apartment. Gibbs' call for a report has an even sharper than usual intensity to it.

Michelle explains succinctly, concluding with a description of the shooter. "Five foot nine, black hair, brown eyes, dark Mediterranean complexion, he was wearing a white T-shirt with a 'Colgate' logo high on the left breast and denim jeans, slightly faded. He had a small scar on the left cheek, he's left handed and on that hand was a gold ring, maybe a school ring, with an oval ruby."

Abby is impressed the woman got all this in half a second with a gun aimed at her face. Under the same circumstances, she's pretty sure she would only recall the diameter of the barrel - and it would be a cannon's muzzle. However, she supposes it's natural; the mind would certainly photograph that instant for posterity – assuming there _was_ posterity.

To Gibbs, there could be more detail. "What kind of gun was it?"

"A glock, sir."

"Anything else?"

Michelle is about to answer, but is momentarily torn. Her investigation had been decidedly unorthodox and irregular, but she had made the decision to learn certain things so she could convey evidence to the team. Now is not the time to back off to preserve her privacy. If privacy was to be her priority, she should have stuck to regulations.

"Sir - I mean Special Agent Gibbs sir - when I photographed the bullet hole and retrieved the bullet, while I was holding it I collected more than just evidence, sir."

He glances down at her naked hands, then about for a box of latex gloves. He sees the accumulated aprons, buckets and heavy rubber gloves, but each pair of gloves is partially covered by the aprons, "You held the bullet in your bare hand?"

"Yes, sir," she admits.

"We'll discuss your crime scene technique in a minute, Lee," he tells her with deadly intensity, "but I had better be _very_ happy with what you found."

xx

"Oh, yeah, like _that's _going to hold up in Court." Anthony DiNozzo has heard a lot of off-the-wall explanations in his life; none have rated lower than this one.

Michelle had been of two minds about telling her colleagues what she had learned. Now she decides she should have followed her first inclination. It had only been the fact that the Agents needed this crucial piece of information that had made her admit to it. Knowing she's wasting her breath with her former Team Leader, she appeals to the top; "Special Agent Gibbs sir, I assure you I'm right. You are not looking for the one who is trying to kill Abby if you focus on this man."

"I'm not 'focusing' on him - _you_ are."

"Sir?"

"I want you both to go back to Headquarters and while Abby does the Forensics work from the bell all the way up to the door, I want you to look at every picture we have to find our shooter."

"Sir, there are thousands."

"You saw his face?" he reminds her.

Michelle will never forget it. It's etched into her memory beyond the extended barrel of the gun pointed at her forehead. "Yes."

"Then there won't be thousands, just the ones who match his description. Get Michaels on a sketch before the image blurs into the first thousand mug shots."

She nods, turns to retrieve her purse and a hard hand slams into the back of her head, jarring her. She turns back, surprised. His voice is low and intense, charged with a deadly rage. "The next time you're on 'Protection Detail' and you open a door without checking who it is, you can kiss Field, Legal and _all_ of NCIS goodbye; is that clear?"

"Yes, Special Agent Gibbs sir, it's clear."

"Then get out of here before I kick your butt out."

x

When Michelle is gone, cautiously leaving without turning her back on the angry Supervisor, Abby opens her mouth to protest but Gibbs' hard look silences her. He's not about to get into anything with Abby, but neither will she contradict him in front of his team. "Go with her back to Headquarters, and you stay there until I personally let you out."

xx

McGee and DiNozzo arrive at Olympus Greek Restaurant four blocks from Abby's apartment house to find the employees shutting down for the night. The food is stowed, pots and pans being washed, the front floor being mopped. "Sorry, gentlemen, we're closed," one of the men tells them. All four wear a uniform of black trousers and white short sleeve shirts under long white 'BBQ' aprons bearing the restaurant's red logo at the upper right.

"We're not here for dinner;" DiNozzo assures him, pulling out his badge, "just want to ask some questions." The young men exchange looks, none seem to have anything to hide.

"Shoot," the spokesman tells them.

"One of you made a delivery earlier this evening addressed to an Abby Sciuto?"

"That was me," a young man holding a mop admits, suddenly wary. He's tall with blonde hair and a complexion more Nordic than Mediterranean, "is there anything wrong? Didn't she get it?" Visions of missed orders, reprimands and docked pay dance before his eyes.

"Not exactly."

"Oh, geez." One of the other men looks at him sharply and there's little love expressed in it. DiNozzo doesn't care.

"Did you deliver the order?"

"I thought I did. This guy met me on the steps outside, asked me if I had the Sciuto order. I told him 'yes', he paid me the right amount, said he'd save me a four story climb, even gave me a tip. I saw him go in," he insists.

"Can you describe him?"

"About five ten, black hair, he was wearing a 'Colgate' T-shirt and jeans. Didn't she get the order?" he asks apprehensively.

"She got it. But in the future you'll want to make sure you complete the trip, four stories or not."

"Yes, sir."


	7. Murder

Chapter Seven  
Murder

"You could have been killed!" Jimmy Palmer startles Michelle when he catches up with her in the hallway outside the Legal Department. When he had heard the news from Max Grant at breakfast – the story of the shooting at Abby Sciuto's apartment had made the rounds from the Forensics Team all evening through the night shift into the morning.

He had gone in search of the woman who was not answering multiple calls to her cell phone. He'd grown more frantic by the moment as he searched the building, until his exclamation on finding her in the hallway outside Legal burst through the air, making her jump.

Michelle turns around, tries not to show how startled she was by his 'greeting. She'd spent the entire night in the building and is now resuming her old life, bitter and angry and determined not to show this either. "Good morning to you too - and I'm fine;" she assures him, determined to play down the events of the previous evening - he has enough to worry about. "It sounds worse than it was."

"He had a _gun_ pointed at your head until Abby tackled you!"

"Well," she admits, "maybe it doesn't. But you should be happy," she concludes bitterly. "As you can see," she indicates the door she had been about to go through, "I'm back in Legal."

"I'm not 'happy' about that," he reminds her.

"Relieved then. I'm back in the world of dockets and briefs and warrants and faxes and testimony, where the greatest danger I risk is a paper cu–" She's unprepared when he grabs her arms, yanks her into a tight embrace, makes her yelp sharply before he silences her with his lips on hers.

She knows his mind, divided as it is by her situation and his own, but despite all her frustration and regrets and anger there is still one thing in her world that has not changed, that she can still count upon, that is forever. She embraces him as tightly, her lips pressed to his, all the humiliation and regrets and embarrassment able to be washed forcefully away. At that moment the door behind her opens.

They turn toward the sound to see Patti Morton exit the department. She stops, surprised. "Well, so _this_ is why you're always vanishing."

xxx

When Gibbs, who with his team has spent the entire night at Headquarters, comes down the stairs from an early morning briefing of the Director, McGee calls to him.

"_What_?" he demands sharply, then realizes lack of sleep and no shortage of tension are having their effect on him and tones it down. "What do you have, McGee?"

"I've been thinking of Agent Lee's report and I pulled her Psych records."

"What do they show?" Whenever psych records are pulled, it never seems to be good news.

"Not those records," McGee says, anticipating him, "I'm talking about the McKnight-Warren tests that she took a few years ago while in College, and then again about a year ago. They're part of her official record, since they were noted in her pre-Appointment background checks and she had to report when she retested. McKnight-Warren is a scale that measures the level of psychic ability, 1 to 100. In her first test she was rated as a 29, the second time a 32."

"Not very good, is she?" DiNozzo asks; certain this bears out his position on the subject.

"The National Average is 18, Tony."

"All right, she's better than average," Gibbs grants impatiently. "Your point?"

"I don't think we should dismiss her observations about the bullet."

"I'm not _dismissing_ anything;" he declares forcefully, "her 'observations' fit the facts too well. Barkarian was in custody when someone took a shot at Lee. What are the odds of two people deciding to hit Abby at the same time?"

"Non-related? One in nine hundred twenty seven thousand four hun -,"

"I didn't ask for a number, '_Spock'_!"

"I thought he was the 'Elf Lord'," DiNozzo chips in.

"_Both _need ear jobs."

x

He returns his attention to McGee, determined to salvage some useful work out of the early morning. "What did you pull up on the driver of that car?"

"Not a lot," McGee admits, focusing on his monitor, not on his boss. "He knew what to expect and how to avoid the cameras. The best image I got, even enhanced, isn't good." He activates the plasma screen.

The camera set above the metallic awning of the hospital is not a good one and the rushing car is blurred by speed, out of focus and almost completely washed out by the glare of 8 halogen lights, four above and four below. The driver's face, despite all that McGee and Sciuto could collectively accomplish, is too washed out and out of focus to provide an suitable image. But what they can see gives them no joy.

"Neither of the other descriptions mentions a beard," DiNozzo reminds them.

"Get Abby on this, will you?" he asks McGee. A few seconds later the downward pointing camera mounted on the ceiling of her Lab gives them a full view of the room. "Abby?" The white coated woman turns from one of her instruments, looking up at them.

"Hi, Voice from Above." She sounds far more cheerful than she had been last evening. Gibbs doesn't have to know her as well as he does to know it's completely faked.

"How are you doing?"

"Well, considering I've had my best friend assaulted, nearly been run over only to have some man die in my place and had another friend nearly get a bullet through her head, I'd say I'm pretty good _for someone three seconds away from __**a nervous breakdown**_!"

"Hang together, Abs. The Ogre'll break soon."

"I've got a couple of things you can use to break him _with_," she offers.

He is not going to pursue that. "What did you get from last night?"

Abby elects not to tell him what she really got; he's well aware of what this nightmare is doing to her. "There was nothing on the doorbell, it hasn't been touched in days. The print I raised was Dawn's. He obviously knew we'd look there. Same with the door, I got a DNA trace but I suspect it's Barkarian's; too high to match the guy who shot at Michelle. It'll be this afternoon before I have something positive."

He looks about the lab, as much as the camera shows, "Let me talk to Lee, where is she?"

For a moment Abby looks baffled. "She's not here."

"Where _is_ she?" he demands sharply.

"Back at Legal," Abby says it as though the answer is utterly obvious, surprised at his tone. "You 'fired' her, remember?"

Gibbs snatches up the remote, clicks off the screen and starts for the elevator, "McGee, you're on breakfast detail. Ziva, run down the descriptions Lee and that delivery guy gave us again. DiNozzo, give Barkarian another go. After breakfast, Ziva, you get two hours, then you get on him. I'll decide then who gets the next nap, but no one _leaves_ here until we have our suspects!"

Tim picks up the phone, calls down to Forensics to get Abby's order. He doesn't even want to think of what's about to transpire upstairs.

x

The Legal Department on the fourth floor is generally a quiet place, which is one of the reasons a sharp slap that knocks the door open is so startling. Leroy Jethro Gibbs stalks in, his attention upon the apprehensive occupant of the desk halfway across the room on his right. Michelle watches him approach like a battleship, decides she'd far prefer the real thing. She draws back in her seat as he bends over her desk, fists clenched on her files, his eyes like cannons and his low, constrained voice all the more deadly for his tight control. He looks like he wants to reach out and strangle her. Only his clenched fists, not an office full of Agents, stop him. "You have five seconds to explain what you're doing sitting here on your _ass_ when you're supposed to be in the Lab guarding Abby Sciuto."

"Y-you _fired_ me, Sp-Special Agent Gibbs, s- sir," she answers fearfully. She's not sure if he'll hit her again but he inspires such fear in her that she can barely speak.

"I did no such thing!"

"Y-You took me off 'P-Protection Detail', sir; your last words after you _slapped_ me were 'get out of here before I kick your butt out'."

"I _said_ you were to look at the mug shots and match that shooter."

"He's not _in_ our records, sir," she insists in a burst of control. She had been up all night looking, now she wishes she were back in the Records Room. Her heart pounds like a trip hammer, she's utterly terrified of the giant Agent and what he'll do in his rage.

"But I did _not_ clear you to come back up here! You're released when I _say_ you're released and not a second before, you _got_ me?"

"Y-yes, sir," she answers meekly, humiliated that her voice is shaking.

"Now get back down to the Lab and you do not take your _eyes_ off Abby until you are relieved. _U__nderstand_?"

"Yes, sir, I understand, sir." Their eyes locked, she is too scared to move as the moment draws on.

"I mean _NOW_!" he thunders.

"Yes, _sir_!" She rushes out from behind her desk, hurrying quickly past him, ducks to avoid him as she passes but gets about ten feet and stops dead.

x

She sees, can feel every eye in the room on her. All of her friends are watching her run - cower in fear from this man. She's worked for so long to earn their respect, thought she had and now this man.... She feels incendiary rage sear her.

In the space of a single breath everything she's silently endured over the past months, the humiliation and embarrassments and shame and terror of Gibbs since his return and her reassignment out of the Field after all her hard work slams her, fueling the conflagration. She turns around and her eyes blaze as she glares up at the mountainous man.

x

"_NO_!"

"_What_?" he stares at her, clearly unable to believe a Junior Agent; a 'Probie', has said this to _him_.

But she has a lot more to say.

"Special Agent Gibbs, you are the Ranking Agent in this organization - Deputy SAIC and I'm obliged to obey your orders, and I _will_ protect Abby just as you and the Director have each ordered, but you will _not_ treat me as a _slave_! I am a duly qualified and appointed Special Agent and you shall treat me with the _respect _due that rank. I will follow your lawful orders but I am _not_ a ping-pong ball to be bounced back and forth between departments and assignments at will; nor am I a convenience to be advanced to the Field when I'm handy and _demoted _again when I'm done!"

She stalks forward, closes half the distance to him. "And I'll tell you something else: I am not _afraid_ of you anymore! I'm _done_ being afraid of you! You have humiliated, demeaned and embarrassed me for the _last_ _time_! How you treat your team I have no control over, but in fulfilling my duties as an Agent I will not be intimidated, harassed, demeaned, insulted, humiliated, threatened or _**slapped**_!"

Gibbs stalks up to her, his face a mask of deadly fury. They're an inch apart and he looks almost straight down into her almond eyes, forcing her to look high up into his. The air between them is charged, burns. Everyone around them holds their breath.

"You _done_?" he demands volcanically, looking down into her blazing eyes.

"Treat me with the respect I deserve - and _keep your hands __**off **__me_ - and we'll get along. If not, if you ever _hit_ me again I swear I will have you up on Charges before the Director! I'll take you all the way to the _SECNAV_ if I have to!"

He stares down at her, his eyes sear her but she doesn't flinch, returning fire for fire.

x

"I have been waiting," he tells her with quiet intensity, "for the day you develop a backbone."

He takes a step back, the tension between them dissipates as he smiles, extends his hand courteously toward the door. "After you."

xx

When Lee and Gibbs leave the elevator together DiNozzo and David are mildly surprised. They had expected him, but they had also expected what was left of Lee to be on her way down to the Lab with - as usual - her proverbial tail between her legs. As they approach, Gibbs' voice cuts through the room.

"Special Agent Lee will be _joining_ us," he declares, glancing to her but extending his hand toward the desk beyond McGee's, which she had used during her short tenure during the Kane investigation. "You know which desk is yours."

"Yes, _Sir_!"

"You can move your gear later. Right now you have your Assignment."

"Of course, Sir."

"Meantime," he addresses his amazed team, "I'll be with the Director." He heads back toward the stairs, leaving the beaming woman with her new partners.

xx

"Special Agent Gibbs is here to see you, Director," the intercom on her desk announces. Jenny reaches out, touching the button, at the same time putting the file she has been reading aside, wanting to give him her full attention.

"Send him right in," she directs, impressed that the man has given either woman a chance to speak. This must be significant.

When he enters, she wants to know only one thing: "Did you get the guy who's stalking Abby?"

"Not yet," he admits, "we have several descriptions. The guy's hiring patsies to do his work. One mental midget was paid $1,000 to beat Abby, got Dawn Caldwell instead, and almost blew the bankroll on Ziva."

"I trust you have a better explanation than that?"

"I do," he says, giving her a rundown of the past few hours.

x

"You've a unique team, Jethro."

"It's about to get stranger." She fixes him with even greater attention, anticipating his revelation, "I need that budget we discussed."

"She did it?" Jenny guesses.

"Told me off in front of a room full of Agents. It wasn't pretty."

"I'd have paid to see it," she assures him with a satisfied smile, "and you did set the terms. I was wondering how long she was going to take."

"I was ready to give up. I was two weeks away from telling Nathan he could keep her."

"Don't underestimate her. She has good potential."

"Once she has the rough edges knocked off."

Jenny opens the second drawer on the right and pulls out a blue file folder with the round NCIS insignia upon it. "Don't knock off too many, rough edges are your peoples' strength."

"Amen to that."

"I expect you'll train her well," she hands him the folder.

"Did a pretty decent job with you, _Director_."

xxx

NCIS Headquarters in the Navy Yard may have its own cafeteria, but that's not to say that it's a beloved place. While suitable for busy Agents on lunch breaks, recently its 'breakfast menu' leaves something to be desired – like taste. Therefore, for the past several weeks, the Agents take turns at any variety of establishments off base in filling orders. Most frequently for Gibbs' team this is at Jorgensen's Deli.

It's about twenty minutes after receiving his orders that Tim pulls up in his car anc parks outside the busy store. He's pleased to get a space so close. He gets out, crosses the sidewalk and he is about to enter when he hears someone call his name. He looks across the street, amazed to see Abby Sciuto waving at him, an expression of delight upon her face.

"_Abby_?" He can't believe she's here. She's _supposed _to be in Protective Custody in her bullet-resistant lab, not wandering the streets. She's wearing one of her favorite outfits, black tee shirt with the ribs and spine of a skeleton, along with a bright red heart, and black pants bear the skeletal pelvis and leg bones.

"Abby, what the _devil_ are you doing off Base?" he demands, calling across the street to her, "I said _I_ was getting breakfast, not that _you _should!"

"But I had to see you!" she calls back, starting toward the curb.

"Are you out of your _mind_? If Gibbs finds out he'll–"

x

Before he can finish, before she can reach the curb, a passing car pauses between them. The front seat passenger and two in the rear all lean toward her. Abby shrieks as three guns begin firing, the barrage of shots loud in the morning quiet.

McGee is frozen in horror, watching Abby's body jerk as she is driven backward, step by jerky step, blood exploding from her. She's driven back until she slams against the brick wall and when the guns stop she collapses face down upon the sidewalk.

The car's left rear window explodes from a close pair of shots, followed by the front window. The tires scream in a cloud of white smoke before they catch and launch the car forward. Tim gets into the street, his fourth bullet shatters the rear window as the two heads in the rear duck down and his fifth bullet goes into the trunk. The sixth holes the front windshield before the car screams around the corner.

Unable to pursue, Tim turns to his friend.

x

Abby Sciuto lies unmoving, face down on the sidewalk. For all the violence of her death, there's little blood beyond the wild sprays that trace back from the curb to her body. A part of his mind that still functions in the horror tells him that Abby probably died instantly, before she fell.

Tim crosses the street, unable to bear the sight of his friend lying on the cement. His gun falls from his hand in an unheard clatter of metal. He falls to his knees beside her body, tries to hold back his tears.

Looking down at her still body, grief leaves no room for anger. His vision blurred by tears, he's barely aware that a growing crowd of onlookers assembles about him, not drawing too close to the body of the dead woman.

Pulling out his cell phone, his body barely with him, he presses a speed dial combination by touch alone.

//Gibbs,// the unit says into his ear.

"Boss," he says in tightly choked voice, barely able to force the words out. He can't look away from Abby's body as he kneels beside her, unwilling to believe this. "Get down here - in front of Jorgensen's Deli."

//What've you got, McGee?//

"Boss –" he tries to say the words, they won't come. Tears trickle down his face. He doesn't wipe them away, trying to force out words. Grief and horror steal his voice. He kneel beside the body of his friend; the most _alive_ woman he's ever known and cannot believe it.

//Come on, McGee, what's up?// Gibbs, never one for patience, is shorter than usual of the precious commodity.

"Boss –" his voice is a strangled whisper; he can barely force the words out, "boss, it's Abby –"

//Abby's restricted to the Yard,// Gibbs tells him what he already knows full well.

"I don't know why, but she's _here_. But…" he stares down at her still body, unable to endure the sight. "She's... dead."

x

The silence is smothering. When Gibbs' voice comes through again, it is flat, toneless. //Say that again.//

Tim doesn't _want _to say it again. Saying it again might make it real. His whispered words are smothered by grief; "Boss, she was shot, right in front of me. I - I emptied my Sig into them, but they _killed_ her." He stares at the body of his loving friend, tears blurring his vision.

"Abby's dead."

There's horrible silence. Then –

//We'll be right there.//


	8. In the Fire of Revenge

Chapter Eight  
In the Fire of Revenge

Gibbs' blue Charger screams to a stop four minutes later, the blue, white and black Medical Examiner's van almost on its bumper. Two Metro Police units block the scene, their rotating colored lights cast a surrealistic glow. The area is cordoned by two strips of yellow 'Crime Scene' tape stretching from shops to parked cars.

Gibbs, DiNozzo, David, Mallard and Palmer are brought up short by the sight.

Abby lies face down, her face turned away from them in a pool of blood.

McGee sits on the curb several feet away, still within the cordoned area, staring at her body; terrible loss reflected upon his face.

Ducky thinks unwillingly that for there to be this much blood following her immediate death, her body had to have been riddled with bullets. He wants to turn that rational, practical part of his mind off - this is his _friend_ - but detestable as it is, he has a job to do.

But for Donald Mallard, the light has just gone out of the Cosmos. Abby had been that light, a young vital life to energize an old man's days - and now there will be only darkness.

As he wipes the sting of tears from his eyes, a thought that had been forming for many months comes to full clarity.

This shall be the _last _body that he will have upon his table.

x

Tim McGee awaits them in the cordoned rectangle, while the four uniformed officers obtain testimony from witnesses. Tim is not interested in getting 'testimony': he has witnessed all he can handle. He'll make his report to his friends; to Abby's friends.

As Mallard and Palmer approach the still body of the once so lively woman, the other Agents converge on McGee. He rises to meet them.

Even at a glance, it's clear they are all equally devastated.

"Who did it?" is the first thing Gibbs wants to know.

"I didn't recognize anyone. Black BMW, '04 or 05, no rear license plate, no back window now, shattered left rear window, holed driver's window, trunk right and front windshield right. I emptied my Sig into it."

"Did you get any of them?" DiNozzo asks, his voice tight.

"I'm sure I hit one, I saw him go. There were four in the car. They stopped, opened up on her, sped away."

"You checked her?" Gibbs asks.

Looking into his burning eyes, McGee knows one thing: Leroy Jethro Gibbs is prepared to hunt; ready to kill.

He shakes his head. "Pulse, nothing, no need for more." His voice shakes, he can barely say the words: "She died instantly."

"They're gonna die _slower_," DiNozzo vows through bared teeth. Fury vies with grief, and tears he will not shed in public turn his voice into a vicious growl. His body trembles with rage. Ziva doesn't say anything. Looking into her eyes, there is no need for words.

x

Gibbs stares past Ducky at the still body of his friend, unable to believe she's dead. She was the most alive, the most loving, most vital person he'd ever -- "_What the Hell was she doing out here_?" he explodes, turning on McGee in a blazing conflagration that threatens to consume everything: them, the street, the City! McGee has seen anger in Gibbs eyes - now he realizes he's seeing _murder_.

"I gave orders she wasn't to _leave_ the building!"

"Boss, I didn't bring her, I _swear_ I didn't!" Grief strangles his voice. How could the man think he would take her into danger? "I heard her behind me, turned, she was across the street," his voice breaks, "I don't know_ why_ she was here!"

x

Gibbs tries to push down his rage, to recall his place. He is Team Leader and does not have the _luxury_ of giving vent to his feelings, no matter how forcefully they drive him - and Abby's loss is a truly devastating blow.

But there's a look in the young man's eyes that the former sniper, who has seen more than his share of death, doesn't like. "You all right?"

x

McGee cannot believe the man has asked such a question. "_No_!" He remembers the love the vivacious woman had - for _him_ - all her efforts to show that love, her only real wish being that he would love her and her pain from his denials. Tears sting his eyes, but grief is overwhelmed by fiery rage he won't try to restrain, "Boss, I _want_ them! _Sc__rew_ rules, screw regulations, I _want_ them!" Glancing at his two fellow Agents, he knows he is not alone on that mission. "I'm going to track them down if it takes everything I have and I don't _care _about rules or regulations or _Law _- and if you want my badge you can have it - but I am going to _hunt_ them down and they're going to _**die**_!"

"Then you'd better be fast," Gibbs warns him, "because I'm not leaving leftovers."

x

"I can well understand your feelings, Jethro." Ducky calls from beside Abby's body. "I too would be irate _if_ this were indeed Abby Sciuto."

Gibbs stares at the Doctor kneeling beside the corpse of his favorite friend and, seeing he is sincere, turns on McGee. But before any of the Agents can launch into a tirade at the torment this misidentification had put them through, Ducky continues,

"Do not blame Timothy, I too was fooled and I am considerably closer. The duplication is meticulous, almost perfect, down to the tattoos. This one on her neck still makes me nervous." Abby's friends surround them, looking down at the woman Ducky is claiming is not their friend. "But as you can see, _our _Abby is not a blonde," so saying, he lifts the edge of the black wig from 'Abby's' head, "nor does she have one green eye and one blue one. I expect we shall find the other tinted lens somewhere about; it was probably dislodged in the violence of her murder. We'll either find it nearby, or possibly under her body."

x

"And she's _made up_ to look like Abby." Gibbs concludes, relief not threatening to make him forget his duty. In the relief that their friend is not dead, they can not forget that _someone _is.

"Oh, ninety nine point nine nines. She was intended to fool us." He looks down to the woman. "The questions are: why were you made up to look like our friend, and _why _were you killed?"

x

Gibbs pulls out his cell phone - something that would never have occurred to him a minute before - pushes a speed dial combination and waits for only two rings. "Forensics, you've got Abby. No squeezing."

"Abby," he's never been so relieved, so happy to hear any voice. He watches the relief spread through the others. Until that moment, there could have been doubt. Now there is none. "I want you to meet us at Jorgensen's Deli; have Lee ride shotgun. You know where it is?"

"Of _course _I do!" her voice rises in delight. "Gibbs, you're taking me out to a surprise breakfast?"

"Oh, yeah," he assures her. "Breakfast'll _definitely_ be a surprise."

xxx

Abigail Sciuto stares in horrified pity at the corpse of her doppelganger. The woman even wears a copy of one of her favorite outfits, rather than what she is currently wearing, a black miniskirt and a large, ornate silver cross set with a large 'ruby' dangling in front of a black tee shirt. On the right side of her shirt is a white cross, on her left a pair of red horns. Between them, white letters proclaim: '_I'm gonna live forever; God doesn't want me and Satan's scared I'll take over_.'

If the woman lying before her were wearing the same combination, Abby's sure she'd faint and never want to awaken.

It's bad enough that her best friend is in the hospital for being in her apartment at the wrong time, another innocent man is dead for having saved her from a hit and run killer while Michelle Lee was nearly shot in the head on opening her door - but now this woman lies dead at her feet, made up as a copy of her.

"Gibbs…" she whispers barely audibly, her hands on her stomach, "I think I'm going to be sick."

Gibbs puts his arm about her shoulders, turns her and walks her toward his car. He sits on the hood beside her, lets her lean weakly against him. She doesn't lose her last meal, but it's a long time before the world stops lurching. She sits wit in the stability of Gibbs' arm and he gives her his handkerchief. She wipes the cold sweat from her forehead, then buries her face in it.

For as long as he's known her Abby has reveled in the 'hinkiest' side of human darkness, but he has come to know there's a limit beyond which even she cannot endure.

"That woman… that is me … and they _killed _her."

She looks up at him, naked appeal in her eyes. "Why, Gibbs? _Why_ are they doing this?"

He draws her closer, knowing protection is an illusion but it's one she needs. Her body trembles against his. "I'll find out. I promise you."

xxx

"Boss?" DiNozzo comes over to the car, carrying a black wallet.

"What is it, DiNozzo?"

"She had this in her pocket," he turns over the wallet, which Gibbs opens; finding a Motor Vehicles ID belonging to Erica Paulson.

Abby, looking at the picture, cannot repress a shudder. "She _still _looks like me." With the exception of blonde hair, the photo could be Abby's.

"McGee," the Agent turns to them, "you and Lee get Abby back to the Lab." He turns his attention to Lee. "You do not leave her for _anything_."

"Yes, sir."

Abby tries very hard not to cling to Gibbs as he moves away.

"Come on, DiNozzo."

xxx

Gibbs car pulls to a stop before a small house on the edge of the suburbs and the Agents survey the residence. "She lives with a roommate," DiNozzo says, "Melody Whitehurst."

"Looks like we're being watched," Gibbs' comment draws DiNozzo's attention to the face peering out at them from behind a drawn back curtain at the left corner. As they approach the side door the face disappears. Wearing their black 'NCIS Federal Agent' jackets with the large gold shields emblazoned on their left sides, they are enough to spark attention anywhere.

x

"I don't know where she is, Officer." Whitehurst, a small woman with short brown hair and timid looks tells Gibbs. They sit at the round table in the kitchen, DiNozzo standing nearby behind the woman, not allowing himself to be a distraction. He had brought in a Forensics test box and now stands out of sight. Gibbs wants to obtain as much information as possible before revealing that Paulson is dead.

"She got a job two days ago, left early this morning and I haven't seen her since. She's not in any trouble, is she?"

Any answer he could give at this point would have to be a lie. "What can you tell us about this job?"

"She's an Actress. That is, she's tryna find work as an Actress. She has things out on the web, her resume, she has an Agent and she goes on lots of interviews and collects lots of blisters. Work's hard - she doesn't want ta go ta New York or California, there's less work out there. But she gets some theater, some small bits, enough to make ends meet - some of the time.

"Anyway, two days ago this guy e-mails her. He seen her resume on-line an' wants ta audition her for a 'special role'. Naturally she's careful, so she meets him here with me."

"Can you describe him?"

"He's maybe about 20's or 30's, brown suit, bad tie but that's just my opinion, black hair. He doesn't _look _like a pervert." Gibbs refrains from asking what a pervert looks like, he doesn't want to know. The only thing that matters is that he'd fooled both women, for what he'd done is definitely 'perverted'.

"Is this him?" Gibbs pulls a picture out of an envelope, one Ziva had taken surreptitiously of Mike Mawher in his shop. Whitehurst barely glances at it, repulsed by the image.

"No way, the other guy was nicer looking. This one looks like death warmed over and left ta rot."

It had been worth a try. "Please go on."

"He's got this special 'job', one he says Erica's perfect for. He shows us this picture and I swear it's Erica with black hair. He says her name's 'Abby' and he wants Erica ta pretend ta be her. He's got these clothes with him - really icky stuff - Goff shit - and we figure maybe we was wrong, that he's a pervert who likes 'dress up'. When he says she has ta have a spider web drawn on the left side of her neck I almost laugh him out of the house.

"But Erica's interested, 'specially when he goes he'll give her $1,000 to pose as this 'Abby' for five minutes. We figure it's pictures, but he swears there's no camera and no nudity."

"What did he say he wanted?"

"He just wants her to meet someone, a 'DiNozy' or 'MacNee' or something like that. She's suppose ta distract him for a couple'a minutes. He's suppose ta be goin' somewhere or doin' something, she's just supposed ta keep him distracted long enough for him ta be late. She don't even have ta fool the guy, it don't matter if he catches on that she's not 'Abby', just so long as he's distracted for a couple'a minutes.

"He said one or the other always goes to this deli, she was ta meet him there when he stops for breakfess, distract him soes he misses some appointment, then leave."

"You ever find out why?"

"No. It was just going ta be easy money, no one gets rousted or anythin'. He picked her up this morning, he was ta point out the one she's suppose ta distract and then she gets the thousand."

"Where did you meet with him?"

"Right here;" she indicates the table at which they sit, "we weren't going to let him even see the rest of the apartment; certainly not the _bedroom_."

Gibbs looks past her to DiNozzo and the portable forensics box, his expression conveying the message.

"Is there anythin' wrong?" Whitehurst asks. "She didn't get inta trouble, did she?"

This is the part of these interviews that he hates. He looks past her to DiNozzo, who handles the 'sensitive stuff' better, the younger Agent falling back on his BPD training. "Miss Whitehurst, I'm sorry, but we have bad news."

xxx

"Abby?" Director Jenny Shepherd's voice emerges from the video intercom on her desk, and the Scientist goes into her office to take the call. A touch of the button on the top and Shepherd's face appears on the screen.

"Yes, Director?" It's unusual for the woman to contact her directly. Seeing she's not alone, however, Abby knows this will be far from a 'usual' event.

In the background on the too small screen she can just make out enough of parts of other figures to recognize another red haired woman, NCIS' Chaplain O'Mallory and a dark skinned woman holding an infant in her arms.

"Just wanted to make certain all is in order," Shepherd stresses subtly, "we're bringing down someone who wants to meet you."

Focusing on the woman in the background, the one with a small baby in her arms, Abby feels her heart turn over in her chest. She has no doubt about who these people are - she'd been dreading this moment. "Yes, Director," she acknowledges crisply, whispers a fervent prayers and feigns a confidence she doesn't feel. She turns off the unit, looking at Agent Lee seated near the door, who had not seen anything on the screen.

"We're about to go to Hell," she announces, closing her lab coat and opening a drawer, pulling out and running a brush through her hair, grateful for the moments afforded by Shepherd's warning.

xx

Director Jenny Shepherd and Reverend Siobhan O'Mallory, wearing her distinctive 'uniform' along with her gold badge clipped to the hem of her skirt, escort a young black woman off the elevator and into the lab. She wears a black dress, holds to her shoulder a baby Abby judges cannot be more than ten months old. She can't miss the misery which, while held carefully in check, covers the woman like a black shroud.

"Celia Johnson, this is our Forensic Scientist Abby Sciuto," Shepherd doesn't perform the reciprocal introduction, there's no need. Abby knows who she is.

Michelle, near the door, is content not to be introduced or even noticed, doing her best to fade into invisibility.

"Mrs. Johnson, I can't think of anything to say to tell you how sorry I am."

"They tell me..." the young woman says very carefully, trying to keep her voice from shattering, "....that you're the one ... Bob saved."

"Yes, Ma'am," Abby does not try to add any more. There are no words she can think of that will mean anything.

"I just ... wanted ... to meet you - to see - who it was - that Bob won' be - coming ho–" In her arms the baby fusses, sensing the powerful emotions playing heavily about him. "This... is Bob Junior; he's ten - months - old."

"Mrs. Johnson," Shepherd interjects, "I assure you we are doing everything in our power to hunt down your husband's killer."

"Do you know who did it?"

"Not yet," Abby admits, "but I _promise_we'll get him."

"They tell me ...." She can't fight anymore. The baby starts to cry as well as they cling to each other. Siobhan gently takes her shoulders, guiding the sobbing pair back to the elevator, their cries stabbing Abby even after the doors close. Abby knows she'll hear that soundless weeping for the rest of her life.

When she looks up, Shepherd is standing in front of her. "Are you going to be all right?"

Abby does not feel up to a lie. "No. If you don't mind, I'd like to be alone."

"Abby...."

"Director, if you don't _mind_ I'd really _rather_ be _alone_!"

Without another word Shepherd signals to Lee and together they quietly leave, reluctantly granting her plea.

Abby tries to contain herself, tries to fight the tears, tries to keep from breaking.

The sliding glass doors behind her open, but she does not turn around. "I said - I'd rather - be _**alone**_!" Her voice breaks despite her efforts; she cannot contain the grief any longer.

"I know," a familiar voice says from right behind her. She turns, finding Gibbs standing there. "Jenny and Agent Lee told me."

"And you …" she whispers, her tears blinding her, choking her, "…came anyway."

He holds out his arms and she steps to him on unsteady legs, wanting nothing more than to feel the comfort of his embrace. "You're … going to tell me … everything's going to be … all right?"

"No."

She feels his kiss on the top of her head and her control shatters.

He holds her as unendurable grief overwhelms her and she sobs brokenly, her face pressed to his chest, unable to stop weeping. In that one tiny part that still functions, she realizes she is getting black mascara all over his white shirt, but she can't stop.

He holds her, caring nothing about a shirt.

xxx

"All right, people, what have we got?" Gibbs snaps as he reaches the Squad Room. He's _not_ in a good mood. Hysterically sobbing women such as Melody Whitehurst don't put him in the best of moods - but that had faded into insignificance when he'd reached the Lab.

Now the team looks up to find him with Abby, and they can't miss two things; Abby's face is scrubbed clear of makeup while the front of Gibbs' white shirt is stained black.

"We have a blond muscle punk in an outdated FedEx uniform who was gived $1,000 cash to go to Abby's apartment and beat her to death," DiNozzo starts the recap.

"We have a bearded man in a souped-up black sedan kill car with reinforced lights in front and on top, whose windows are polarized to prevent him from being seen clearly; who lies in wait for Abby and tries to run her down," Ziva reports.

"If he was supposed to kill Abby," McGee says, "the car was perfectly designed for it. Which means someone knew she'd be at the hospital. That was more than a back-up plan."

"Dawn Caldwell was the target," Gibbs agrees. "Torment Abby by beating Caldwell, then lure her to the hospital."

"Who do we know who's that sadistic?" Tony asks.

"Too many."

x

"The one who shot at me was five foot nine, black hair, brown eyes, dark Mediterranean complexion, left handed," Lee says. "He had a small scar on the left cheek, and wore a gold ring with an oval ruby. He was waiting downstairs and knew Abby had ordered Greek delivery."

"How?"

"Listening at the door?" DiNozzo speculates.

"Why didn't he just knock _then _and shoot her when she opened the door?" Tim asks.

"Because she wouldn't have opened the door," Gibbs counters, "not until she was expecting a delivery." He leaves unsaid that the door should never have been opened, he'd made that point already.

"The one who hired Erica Paulson," DiNozzo recaps for the others, "had black hair but was about five foot nine; Whitehurst described him as wearing a brown suit and a 'bad tie'."

Gibbs turns to Abby, looks into her bleary eyes. He was about to ask if there is anyone familiar in this mélange of descriptions, but a more immediate question presents itself. "Hey, you with us?" He knows she hasn't recovered from her 'secret breakdown', but this is worse.

"I'm sorry, Gibbs, I can't think," she rubs her eyes tiredly, trying to focus her thoughts, hearing the ring of the elevator and hoping it is not in her head. "I'm running on 'Caf-Pow!' and adrenaline, haven't ... _can't _sleep. What day is today?"

"Hang in there. We'll get through–"

"Excuse me?" They all turn to a brown uniformed man wearing an 'NCIS Visitors Pass'. He's been escorted by an agent, stopped at the entrance to the 'bullpen'. In his hand is a large brown envelope and an electronic signature pad. "UPS - I have a delivery for Abigail Sciuto?"

Abby feels the blood drain from her face. Her legs give out and she collapses into a chair.

xx

Sam Littain sits in a chair surrounded by Federal Agents. His delivery had been taken from him and the room, the woman he'd delivered it to had nearly fainted when she'd seen him. Now he waits for something, he does not know what, only that grim people with guns are all around him.

"Hey, er, people?" he tries again, "I've got a lot of deliveries to make this evening."

"It will just be a minute more," the dark haired woman at his left assures him. "They just want to see if there is any reply to the message."

x

Far from a reply, the contents of the package are given very intense and careful scrutiny. Before Littain can inquire as to who is going to reply when the recipient of the package is seated in a chair across the room from him, the tall thin guy in the expensive suit comes back down the hall. "No reply, boss," he tells the gray haired man, holding in his plastic gloved hand an unboxed black videotape cartridge.

"Thank you for your patience," the older man tells him, steps over and handing him a folded $20 bill.

"No trouble," Littain says, happy for the rare tip and resolving never again to make another delivery to NCIS.

x

DiNozzo's cryptic words to Gibbs had meant that no usable prints or any other identifying information had been lifted from the rectangular plastic cassette. The reels are quite large, the tape covers less than a fraction of an inch of one spool.

Gibbs isn't surprised, it only proves his current theory that, despite being a conscienceless murderer and manipulator, their foe is neither careless nor stupid.

It is true that, with deeper analysis, they'll be able to tell which particular machine had been used in making the recording upon it - if they had the machine for comparison. Lacking it, any technical information McGee or Abby could raise off the tape would be worse than useless. The analysis would be a waste of time better spent pursuing other research. At this point, the only way of obtaining useful information from the tape is to watch it.

DiNozzo puts the cartridge into a video player, presses the button as they all gather about the large plasma screen.

DiNozzo & McGee, seeing the fear on Abby's face, stand close on either side. The screen comes alive.

x

Trapped in an underground cave, Admiral James T. Kirk clutches a wrist communicator tightly in his fist. In the background are officers of the starships Enterprise and Reliant, as well as scientists from Regula 1 space station.

"Kahn, you bloodsucker!"

The scene jumps several seconds forward to an old and tired Kahn Noonian Singh on the bridge of the starship Reliant. "Kirk! Kirk, you're still alive, my old friend."

"Still - old '_friend_'! You've managed to _kill _just about everyone else, but like a poor marksman you keep missing the target."

The scene jumps again, Kahn declares: "Perhaps I no longer need to try. I've done far _worse_ than kill you. I've _hurt_ you. And I wish to go _on _hurting you...."

The image vanishes into the blue of blank tape. DiNozzo and McGee are barely in time to grasp Abby as she topples backward between them.

x

Abby feels a gentle hand patting her cheek and she tries to wave it away, not connecting. When she can open her eyes, she realizes she's sitting slumped in a rolled out chair in the middle of the room. Her friends are gathered about her. She wishes she could go back to that dark place whoever it was had dragged her out of. "Did I just have a nightmare?" she asks plaintively.

"Sorry," DiNozzo says.

She looks at the Agents clustered around her. "What happened?"

McGee answers her first. "Well, er, you fainted."

"McGee!" she protests, outraged, and sits upright. "I do _not_ faint!"

"Well, you, er, did." He's brushed aside by Gibbs, who comes down upon one knee before her. He would claim it's the better to face her at eye level, if anyone would believe him.

"You gonna be okay?"

"No, Gibbs! I'm not! This guy's going to keep hurting everyone I care about!" She leaps forward in the chair, wraps her arms tightly about him. "He's going to kill you and Tony and Tim and Ziva and Michelle and Jimmy and Ducky and Jenny and–"

Gibbs peals her off him, looks intently into her eyes and his soft tones are at odds with his words. It's as though he has the entire world's store of gentleness and gives it to her alone. "He's not going to kill _anybody__ else_. We're going to find him, and we're going to stop him. And we're going to keep you safe."

"How, Gibbs, _how_?"

"I know how," McGee declares. Gibbs is surprised, no more so than Abby. They look up at him expectantly. "That is, I think I know of someplace she can be safe."

"Your place isn't safe, McGee," Abby declines, not that she wouldn't go there to spend the night with him, no matter how little sleep she got. But they've tried this before. It hadn't worked.

"I know where you _can't _be found," he assures her, reading her face, "I can take you to–"

"Don't say it," Gibbs commands, standing up and pulling Abby to her feet. "Don't tell me, don't tell anyone. Do it."

Tim turns to Abby. "Don't forget your tooth brush this time."

He walks away from them, pulls his cell phone out as he passes beyond their hearing.


	9. Sanctuary

Chapter Nine  
Sanctuary

"Where are we going, McGee?" Abby asks in Tim's car; her light jacket closed against the current of the air conditioner. She clutches her overnight bag on her lap as Tim drives through the unfamiliar streets. Is he taking her to an NCIS Safe House she's never heard of; not that she knows a fraction of them? FBI Safe House? CIA? She wouldn't be surprised to get there and see Tobias Fornell. What favor has he called in?

"Abby, I'm sorry but right now I'm treating Headquarters, your Lab, this car, everything as being 'bugged' until Gibbs and the others finish with the security teams. All I'll tell you is it's a safe place and that we're almost there."

"Good, any further, you'll be driving out of the city," she says testily. Two days of terror and death have left her with no love of mysteries.

"I'd drive to the ends of the Earth if it would keep you safe," he swears.

She reaches out, touches his arm, "I know, Tim. And I'm sorry about the 'wicked bitch of the west'. Thank you. I feel safer already."

"Good. You remembered your tooth brush this time?"

"Yes, Tim," she 'assures' him with a smile, recalling the last time, "I have my tooth brush."

"Good. We're here." He pulls into the curb just short of the corner and gets out. When she joins him, he points to the building on the corner. "Top floor."

This building is the tallest, all others about it are four to five stories to its six, so whoever lives on that top floor has an unobstructed panoramic view. Considering her lab is halfway below ground and her apartment has windows only in the back bedroom, store room and bath, she finds herself already envying her unknown 'host'.

Tim extends his hand in a 'be my guest' gesture, allowing her to enter the structure first. There's no lobby per se, just a flight of stairs to the right commencing almost immediately beyond the door. There are several mailboxes, only bear names and none of them are familiar. They climb the five flights without a word, stop before the door on the top floor. There's nothing to distinguish it but a gold number '5' over the peephole. Tim knocks on the door.

There is movement from within, and they hear a metal covering moved aside from the other side of the peephole, but the distorting lens conveys nothing. Abby can hardly wait to see who her mysterious protector / host is.

The lock clicks off on the door and it swings wide, revealing a kitchen and a red haired woman clad in a red halter and denim shorts. Abby feels her mouth fall open and she can't stop it.

"Good evening, Shav. Thank you for letting us c – come," Tim stammers as he gets a close look at the woman.

"Good evening, Timmy, Abby. Welcome." Reverend Siobhan O'Mallory greets them with a bright smile.

x

'Sha-vawn', as the closest English tongue can come to her Gaelic name, is NCIS' Washington District Chaplain as well as Curate of St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church. When last Abby had seen her this afternoon she had been wearing her Clerical 'summer uniform' of black skirt, light blue back-button shirt with attached inch high white collar encircling her throat. The only time she'd ever seen her out of 'uniform' was at the dinner Ducky had planned a few days ago and she had been wearing a sky blue gown.

Those being the only attire Abby is familiar with, she's taken aback to see the woman in red halter and denim blue shorts over white sneakers. The image is so at odds with the Priest she's used to seeing it takes Abby's overstressed mind several seconds longer to adjust than it should have.

x

It takes Tim's stunned and addled brain quite a few seconds more, and he never does realize his mouth is hanging open in astounded surprise.

Dressed in the comfort of her own home, which he realizes – which he _hopes_is hotter than the street even with all the windows open and that it's not just him – he finds her far more casually attired than he'd imagined ever seeing her again.

The red halter she wears is buttonless – at least he can't _find_ any buttons – and it's knotted below her breasts, leaving a discreet inch between her breasts. Her trim midriff as well as her sides and back are bare over blue denim shorts, and they allow a very generous view of long silken legs over white sneakers. Her outfit isn't revealing, is quite secure, but its effect upon Tim is quite powerful indeed.

"Timmy?" The word only filters through, dimly heard. "Timmy?"

He awakes with a start. "Huh - what?"

She smiles, returns her attention to Abby as though she'd been speaking to her. "Timmy's explained a bit about your situation, while Director Shepherd gave me a _bare _fraction today," the red haired woman tells her. Her tone conveys she would not refuse to hear the rest of the story though Abby is under no obligation to tell it.

At her stress of the word 'bare' McGee shakes himself as though coming awake, manages to shut his mouth and drive the stunned expression from his face.

"We need help, Shav, a safe place for Abby to spend at least the night."

"Yes," Siobhan says with that maddening smile, "you did tell me that."

The two women sit down at the kitchen table and he stands between them, still completely oblivious to having said this to her twice over the phone already. He's very uncomfortable, and not at all because of the heat. He's both grateful and regretful for his vantage point as he stands looking down at the two women. He can't rip his eyes away from Siobhan. There is nothing to see, but there's far more to remember - and it's the memories that batter him. "I thought that, of all our safe places, this is the breast one."

"Of course," she turns to Abby, "you may stay as long as you like."

x

Siobhan's welcoming manner had not changed and Abby wonders if she's the only one who heard Tim right. She doubts it. "Thank you," she says gratefully, "I don't want to put you out, and I'm _hoping_ one day will be enough."

"Yes," Tim agrees, "the whole point is to keep her out of sight - limit her exposing - ab, _exposure_." He looks around, embarrassed and trying not to look at her anymore, "I - uh - really should be getting back now."

"Say hello to everyone at 'Enkiss' for me."

"Kiss, er, yes - ah, I have to go!"

He doesn't _quite _run out, but it's not a dignified exit either.

x

When he's gone and Siobhan locks the door behind him, she turns to her guest. "Now, what can I do for you?"

"I'm going crazy," Abby declares, looking around the kitchen. There is a door before her leading into a bedroom, while behind her another doorway leads to the other rooms of the apartment, "I hardly know what to say and 'thank you' just doesn't cover it."

"How can I help you?"

"You already are, just by agreeing to let me come here. I'm so scared - I need to sleep, to think, to - to find a place to be safe - at least for one night. Thank you!"

x

Abby gives Siobhan a capsule explanation. Later she'll tell the distressing tale from start to far from the finish, to the point where she had been brought here for safe haven. For now she can barely think. "I'm just so afraid," she confesses, knowing she's repeating herself, hating it and unable to stop it. "Do you _know_ what its like to be completely, totally afraid?"

"Yes. But at those times I try to remember that 'you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received a Spirit of '_daughter_'ship; and by Him we cry 'Abba, Father'.' Your very _name _should be a reminder to you of that, 'so we say with confidence 'The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What can man do to me'?'"

She has no objection to 'adjusting' the Scriptures to establish her point.

"Plenty. Lately I'm scared to death of everyone. Even my _friends_ make me jump sometimes. I don't have your kind of faith."

"No, my child, you have your own. But you know who you can trust. And of course you can stay here as long as you need. I've plenty of room. Why don't you take your jacket off and get comfortable; we can talk."

"It _is_ hot," Abby agrees, surreptitiously wiping a drop of perspiration from her forehead as she reaches for the zipper of her light windbreaker.

"Oh, that's right, I turned them off. Just a moment." She gets up and Abby follows her into the living room. She goes to the air conditioner and turns it on high, does the same in the bedroom beyond the other side of the kitchen, then closes the other windows in the apartment save for the bathroom, allowing circulation. "There," she says, coming back, "it'll cool down nicely now."

"You did that on purpose, didn't you?" So open has Siobhan been, Abby's willing to take the chance in trying to see through her motivations.

Siobhan nods. "It does Timmy some good sometimes to be reminded that there is more to someone than just her appearance. He's so focused on one aspect about me – the Priestly – that he's quick to forget I'm human too." She sits back down, notes that Abby still wears her windbreaker. "Now, why don't you make yourself at home?"

Abby is about to do so, but hesitates again. "I'm so sorry - I didn't _know_. Tim wouldn't tell me where he was bringing me..." she clutches the zipper, trapped. "This is so embarrassing."

"I don't understand."

Unable to put it off any longer, Abby pulls down the zipper and shrugs out of the covering which until now had 'protected' her. Over her black miniskirt, she wears a large, ornate silver cross set with a ruby, a homecoming present from Tony DiNozzo, over a black tee shirt. The tight material hugs her body and at her right breast is a white cross, at her left breast is a pair of red horns. Between them, white letters proclaim: '_I'm gonna live forever. God doesn't want me and Satan's scared I'll take over_.'

Siobhan chuckles. "This is going to be an interesting night."

xx

The apartment has four rooms: bedroom beyond the kitchen with a bath beside it, in the other direction living room and 'reading room', consisting of a computer workstation and a tremendous collection of books that line every wall. "This puts my library to shame," Abby admits, recalling that the heavy furnishing had fallen on top of Dawn during her assault. "I only have one bookcase, all the books I have are gifts, so I keep them. Otherwise if something is electronic, it doesn't see print."

"I don't think I've ever let one go."

x

Abby can't help herself, she has to get closer, to walk these walls. Looking over the woman's vast collection, she can well believe Siobhan's declaration. The variety is incredible, 'eclectic' doesn't begin to cover her hostess' tastes. The books are arranged alphabetically, first by subject, ranging from Astronomy to Zoology, with Religion unsurprisingly taking up a good portion of one wall. But it's not just Christian volumes, there's room devoted to everything from Agnosticism through Zoroaster. But the most unexpected choices are Jackie Collins and Laurell K. Hamilton. The fictional choices are equally exotic, including Horror, Mystery and a significant amount of Science Fiction.

Near one corner, far enough out for one to pass behind to get to the bookshelves, a large rectangular tank of water containing a single long zebra-striped fish stands upon a table. "This is Saint Peter," Siobhan introduces him, picking up a small red cardboard box from beside the tank. "It's nearly his dinner time. Would you like to feed him?"

"Of course." She accepts the box, sprinkles some of its contents onto the surface of the water. Seeing it, the fish arrows up and snatches some. "Why 'Saint Peter'?"

Siobhan shrugs, "I don't know; he looks like a Peter." Abby can't help but laugh, uncertain of the entendre. She doesn't want to presume the priest had said what she thought she heard, but can't dismiss it either. "Seriously, he relaxes me. I think of spending time with him as going through the Pearly Gates. After a hard or stressful day, I just spend time talking to him and things usually come back into perspective."

"This is incredible," Abby says, taking in the large room.

"Would you like to see something?" Siobhan asks, her tone promising something particularly 'juicy'.

"Sure."

x

The redheaded woman goes to one of the shelves and selects a tall thin volume. When she pulls the pale blue book off the shelf, Abby recognizes the design as a High School Yearbook, this one the 'St. Francis Seraph'. "Don't tell him I showed you this," she directs, opening the book to a particular page, turning it around and handing it to her. At first all Abby sees is a collection of 24 color photos, 12 to each large page of 3 by 4. Recognizing the names as being alphabetical, her eyes track to a particular one.

"Oh – My – _GOD_!" She has to look past the much fuller head of hair to recognize a familiar though far younger face. "Oh, I don't _Believe_ this!" she exclaims, laughing delightedly. He's well groomed, no long hair for him, but there is considerably more, styled in the manner of by-gone days, on the younger Timothy McGee than she'd ever seen.

"Chess Club 1,2,3,4;" she reads, "Library Squad 1,2,3,4; Computer Club 1,2,3,4." None of this is a surprise, until - "_Varsity Cheerleader 4_?"

"I talked him into it in our Senior year. I think he liked catching us off the pyramids."

"Then you're in here too?" She turns three pages further to the girl Siobhan had been. Where Tim was photographed in a tuxedo, Siobhan was in an off-the-shoulders blue silk drape that matched all the other girls', possibly even the same one. Where the men got to be elegant, the women were all styled 'sexy'.

"I'll show you a better one." Siobhan pages several more onward to the 'candid shots', these laid out as though a handful of photos had been tossed onto a tabletop and photographed where they lay. In an obviously candid shot the younger Tim McGee, wearing a blue and yellow sweater emblazoned with a large red 'F', has his arm very much around a red haired girl and he looks very happy for it. She's wearing the same colors, only considerably less material, and the red and silver pom-pom in her hand is as wild as her hair.

"Oh, _God_!" Abby exclaims. "If anyone were to see _these_–!"

"Timmy would die of embarrassment. I'm trusting you to never tell anyone."

"I swear." She looks back at the picture. "No one would _believe_ me."

x

"Come on, dinner's almost ready, I've made some Irish stew." Siobhan is grateful God had 'suggested' planning this meal today. No matter how much was eaten there would be plenty, she usually makes enough to last for several days, for the volume of ingredients are expensive on a Priest's stipend.

xx

Sitting down at the table after serving Abby and herself large bowls filled with savory brown stew, Siobhan raises her right hand and Abby, who already had her spoon in her hand, sets it down and clasps her own hands, trying not to let her hostess see her embarrassment. She is certain, however, that the woman hasn't 'noticed'.

Siobhan continues without a pause, her hand over the bowls. "Barukh attah Adonai eloheinu ha-olam shehakol niheyah bidvaro."

Abby, who had been expecting a traditional or at least familiar blessing, in English or at most in Latin, can't conceal her surprise; "Isn't that Hebrew?" She would have been less surprised to hear the words coming from Ziva.

"Or if you prefer English," she raises her hand again equally reverently, "Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the universe, Who by His Word brings about all things."

"I think I'm finally starting to understand you," Abby declares. "You like to challenge people's preconceptions."

"All the time. 'Thou art a Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek'; that's what Bishop Hauss told me at my Ordination. Fundamentally, it doesn't matter whether I perform my duties in impressive white and gold vestments with cope or a red halter and 'Daisy Dukes'. Actually," she leans closer, saying conspiratorially, "that particular set weighs 41 pounds. That's why when we work together I'm content to let George wear it while I'll wear cassock, alb and stole."

xx

During dinner their conversation inevitably returns to the one thing they share in common: Special Agent Timothy McGee. "He tells me you two used to date?" Abby introduces the subject uncomfortably, not sure how to bring it up but needing to. It is bad enough that he is so taken by that exotic wench Ziva, but she has certainly had enough photographic evidence of their connection already.

"That was a very long time ago," Siobhan recalls fondly, "but that's not to say I wouldn't," she admits with a conspiratorial grin, shocking Abby, who's caught between her own expectations and the evidence before her eyes.

"You'd _date_?"

Siobhan grins, waving her hands over the brief red halter, side-less and backless as it is, and blue mini-shorts, "I'm still a woman."

"I know, but–" she doesn't know how to express her point, something Siobhan knew when she introduced the conversation.

She's intimately aware from Timmy about the problems Abby has been having, her hopes for Timmy's love, "I'm not Roman. We in the Episcopal Church do not recognize that Sixth Century regulation, even though it was reaffirmed by Pope Paul VI in 1967."

"I've never understood the difference. You don't follow the Pope, I know, but I understand everything's similar."

"Liturgically we're almost identical, our differences are largely political. The Episcopal Church is Catholic and Protestant, a part of the Anglican Communion. Our 'headquarters' is in Lambeth Cathedral, Canterbury, though we in America are under the direction of our Primate Katherine Jefferts-Schori here in Washington. We are very similar to the Roman Church, and recognize the Bishop of Rome as we would the head of any other denomination but we have many distinctions as well. For instance we date, marry, have families and do all the things _normal_ people do."

"I didn't mean to imply you're not _normal_," Abby begins, greatly embarrassed, "I just–" but then she sees the incipient smile on the woman's lips and realizes she has been 'played'. "You're really good, you know that?"

"I try."

"I can see why Tim likes you so much."

"Timmy does seem to be a hit with the women."

"And all without trying. Tony _tries_, Tim doesn't; I've found that makes all the difference." She shakes herself out of the recollections, tries to divorce herself from the feelings they bring. She'd much prefer to revel in the treasure-trove of learning what the young Tim McGee had been. "What was he like in School?"

"A bookworm with legs." Siobhan smiles fondly. "But a very _sexy _bookworm."

"Yeah?"

"Oh, _yeah_. Why do you think Little Miss Cheerleader went after him?"

x

"Siobhan, could I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"Don't be too quick; it's personal." She would have thought she'd have been uncomfortable to talk about a shared man in their lives – in their pasts – but something about Siobhan puts her at ease. She has the feeling she could talk about anything with the woman.

"Go ahead. The worst I'll do is not answer."

"What happened between you and Tim?"

"You mean why did we stop dating?" Abby nods, anxious about the answer, not sure she really wants to hear it. "A little incident called 'Graduation'. We never 'broke up' or anything like that, but he went his way, I went mine.

"He's probably already told you about his path after High School. Mine took me to New York."

"Did you study Theology there?" She knows one of the major Seminaries on the East Coast is there.

"Oh God, no, my Major was English Lit. In those days Timmy was going to work at NASA; _I_ was going to be the Writer," she chuckles, reflecting on the ironies of life. "Instead I 'fell into' the Priesthood. I was the most lapsed Christian there ever was; an undisciplined, unrestrained, opinionated girl who did everything in her life for the moment – hardly a 'young woman' – who at seventeen was going to be the 'Greatest Novelist of the Twentieth Century'. I'd turned her back on family and closed my ears to advice because I _knew_ what I wanted. I went to New York to seek my fame and fortune. I took all of my savings with me to start out my 'new life', got an apartment on my own in Greenwich Village because every writer I ever admired had lived there at one time and I was there seeking '_Inspiration_'.

"In less than a year I was living in a Women's Shelter; no job, money or hope and too stubborn to admit defeat and run home with my tail between my legs."

"That's sad."

"Not really. Fortunately I didn't have to run anywhere. Sometimes God has to give us a good whack in the ass before we'll listen; sort of like the story of the donkey. Anyway, while pounding the pavement looking for anyone who would hire a now true 'young woman' who had finally had some sense knocked into her and was ready to take on life with some maturity, I found this Church; St. John's in Brooklyn. The Rector had a reputation for being able to find jobs for people; seems he had cultivated incredible connections. Fortunately for me, he also had incredible insight.

"He saw something not quite hopeless about me and gave me a job as Sexton; room and board while I kept the place neat. He was a very inspiring man, and something in George Charles inspired me, taught me what I wanted to do with my life, what I wanted to be.

"After a couple of months working there, watching him, helping him to take care not just of the Church but of the Community, I knew what I wanted to be.

"I wanted to be like him."

"And?" she asks when the narrative trails off.

"And I decided I wanted to enter the Seminary, become just like him. I didn't have a dime to my name and my credit was the stuff Neil Simon made millions on, but he co-signed the loan application. I worked and trained at St. John's while going to class full time. Since I was studying and getting 'hands on training' day in and day out, it took me a shorter time than usual to complete the courses."

"How long was that, about a year?"

Siobhan smiles, knowing Abby doesn't understand the scale. "Three."

"And?"

"When I was Ordained I don't know who was prouder, him or me. I celebrated my very first Mass on Easter Day at St. John's and I had my life all mapped out in my head. Then he did the best thing for me he possibly could have done."

"What's that?" Abby asks with a smile of anticipation, certain she can see it coming.

"He _refused _to consider taking me on as an Assistant."

"_Huh_?"

"I was devastated. I'd always taken for granted I would spend the rest of my life in Brooklyn, but he made sure I was cast out into the world. I was gone from my second home within a month. I became a 'Supply Priest': any Parish that didn't have a Rector or Priest-in-Charge got me as an Interim. I saw more parishes, more people than I ever imagined, and it seemed that every time I started to feel at home my contract was up.

"Regulations in the Diocese of Long Island forbid Interim Priests from being considered for Rector, so I bounced all around, eventually all over the country. I grew 'used' to the temporary life until I wound up at St. Mary's and was hired as a Curate. That was two years ago this month. I've been here longer than at any one place and, while my contract is Annual, you get to be able to tell after a time and it looks like I'll be here for a while."

"And you got reunited with McGee."

She shakes her head. "I didn't even _know_ Timmy was in Washington. I assumed he was still in Maryland when I thought about him at all. Then one day I was substituting for a vacationing Priest in what turned out to be his Parish. When I saw him at Communion I was so _startled _I nearly dropped the Eucharist." She chuckles. "I remember just standing there with my mouth hanging open, Timmy with his hands open to receive the host and this knowing, satisfied smile on his face. The E.M. with me had to nudge me to get me to shut my mouth and continue – and how I made it through the rest of the Service I'll never know. At the 'Coffee Hour' I wanted to slap him, hug and kiss him. What I had to _DO_ – as a Visiting Priest – was just shake hands and learn he was as startled by the reunion as I was."

"And you've seen him since?"

"Of course."

x

That hadn't been exactly taken the way Abby had meant. She'd been thinking a little more of the 'reunited lovers'. "No, I mean have you ever considered - you know - 'seeing' him again?"

"Oh, you mean _seeing_!"

"Yes."

"No."

But then she reconsiders. "Well, not _seeing _him. We've both grown since High School. I honestly don't know if it would work, and I doubt he knows either. Neither of us really wants to risk our friendship as it's evolved by trying something that may not work, or trying to recapture the 'rapture of youth'. We're both quite comfortable with our lives as they are, and I wouldn't want to do anything that could possibly hurt it – or him."

Abby reflects upon that decision, and how it mirrors her earlier mistakes. "Lately, when it comes to love, hurting him is all I _ever _seem to do," she says sadly.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Abby realizes she's been gently maneuvered but: "Oh, yes."

xx

"... and all I ever seem to do is foul up," she concludes sadly. "I told myself I was gaining ground, making 'points'. all I was doing was making things worse."

"Love is a tricky thing," Siobhan tells her after what, Abby realizes, had been a very long and distinctly one sided conversation. Without holding anything back, she'd given her hostess every detail of the past several months. Siobhan never interrupted, taking everything in until Abby was talked out and ready for input. "I'm betraying no confidence, however, by telling you that Timmy does love you very much."

"He does?" He had told her so many times, mostly when he was trying to get her to stop obsessing over him, but for him to tell someone else is unexpected.

"Did you doubt it?"

"He told you?"

"He did, but he hardly had to. I've seen the two of you together. At the restaurant, remember?"

Abby thinks back to those brief minutes. What had she missed, searching for feelings from him, that the other woman had not?

"Timmy is very focused and devoted. When he gives his heart to someone, he does so unreservedly and without distraction. Surely you've experienced this. At that rather short dinner he was my 'escort', I was under no illusion whatsoever that he was my 'date'."

"So you're saying I should -."

"I am _not_." Siobhan cuts her off firmly. "It's neither my place nor my intent to tell you what you _should_ do. I simply bring to mind information - it's up to you to decide what you'll do with it."

xx

Night has fallen unexpectedly soon for Abby and she realizes that in this evening of surprise, revelation and expression she has 'forgotten' to be afraid. She hopes she can keep it up.

In the bedroom, she's momentarily taken by the large and heavy blackout drapes that cover the windows solidly, reaching a good foot beyond the edges of each window.

"I have a lot of trouble sleeping," Siobhan explains, "and there are many times when I'm up very late at night, or all night, and have to try to sleep during the day. With those closed and the door shut, this room is as black as a tomb."

"I knew there was a reason I like you."

"I told you, I am not a sound sleeper," Siobhan cautions her as she prepares the Queen size bed, there being plenty of room for both of them and nowhere else Abby could sleep other than a recliner in the 'reading room', something Siobhan will certainly not hear of. "I toss and turn all night and usually wake up to find myself cocooned in the blankets. I used to fall out of bed a lot before I solved that by getting a bed with a reasonable amount of room to it."

"I used to be the same way. I 'solved' it by going the other way, sleeping in a space that's very confining." She won't tell her how confining. "We'll probably switch sides by morning."

"Several times."

Abby has laid out a long nightshirt on the bed, but she's not thinking, her back turned to Siobhan, when she pulls her tee shirt off.

"I'm impressed," the woman tells her admiringly. Abby looks over her shoulder, confused, seeing that Siobhan has noticed her very large and ornate cross tattoo that covers most of her back. It is much larger than the two 'Saint' figures she has above each shoulder blade.

"Thanks," she's not sure if she should be embarrassed or not. She has never been ashamed for anyone to see her tats but she's never stripped before a Priest either. Of course, she does know only _one_ Woman Priest, so it hardly counts….

"Didn't it hurt?" Siobhan asks, removing her halter.

"Sometimes. It took more than a week to finish," she turns around, now wearing only her black miniskirt, reaching for her antique nightshirt.

"How many do you have?" Siobhan asks, noting her other 'decorations' as she picks up a red pajama shirt.

"Sixteen."

"Wow."

Abby grins. "Do you have any?"

"I did," she admits "when I was in High School. I had it removed a few years ago, as soon as I was satisfied the process was safe."

"_Really_?" she asks, dying to know what the adult Priest needed to have removed from the teen's body, "what was it?"

"Embarrassing," Siobhan admits, but she can tell from Abby's face that the woman isn't going to let it drop, "I'll tell you - if you promise _never _to tell anyone."

"I swear," she crosses her heart.

"It was a red heart; I got it when I was a high school sophomore. I must have been drunk out of my _mind_ - I don't even remember where I got it. All I do know was that there was a football game on Friday night and I went out after that with the rest of the Squad. I woke up Saturday evening with the grandmother of all hangovers, a tattoo and a little card propped against my lamp where I always put things I want to remember, telling me to keep it moist with gel for two weeks."

"What's embarrassing about a heart? That was the first one I got."

"This one was right here," she points to her inner right thigh, _quite _high indeed, at the edge of her shorts; "I could almost wear my 'lack-of-a-uniform' and not flash it. I had to have been bombed out of my _skull_ to let anyone get so close."

"Ouch." That area is so sensitive she must have been truly drunk. "Did it say anything?"

Siobhan nods, "That's why I had it removed. It was red, with 'cut out' letters saying 'S. O'M.' and below it 'T. McG'."

Abby feels her mouth fall open and she can only whisper, "Holy _shi_–oot!"

"Remember your promise; you may _not_ tell anyone."

"Has he seen it?" She _has _to know, berating herself an instant later for the utter idiocy of the question.

"Of course, _plenty_ of times, up close." Siobhan grins the kind of smile only one woman can give another about a shared man in their lives. "_R__eally_ up close, for nearly three years." But then she sobers, "that's why I especially want you to _never_ mention it to him."

"Why not, if he's seen it up close and _personal_?" Far from being jealous, she realizes she relishes the thought.

Siobhan shakes her head, and for a moment there is sadness Abby isn't sure how to interpret. "No, not that it's there. I don't want him to ever know it's _gone_."

Abby is not entirely sure which choice the woman regrets, and decides she will never ask.

x

Siobhan feels there is nothing inappropriate about this conversation or the things she has revealed in confidence to Timmy's friend. It's important for Abby to realize he had a life long before meeting her at Enkiss - with other women. It's a way of putting things into perspective.

From what she's learned this evening of Abby's relationship with Timmy, she decides 'perspective' is the most important thing.

xxx

Tim McGee sits on the edge of his bed, having given up trying to rest. Exhausted, feeling the tensions of the day fading with the knowledge that Abby is safe, at least for tonight, he'd gone to bed early and been totally unable to rest. He'd tossed and turned for nearly two hours, finally sitting up in high frustration.

The worst part is that, whenever he thinks of having placed Abby under Siobhan's protection, he does not think of Abby.

He thinks of _Shav_!

He's spent months - _months_ - establishing a careful line in his relationship with her; a private, personal line he will not cross. It had been manageable because the only times he saw her she had been in 'uniform' or in Liturgical vestments. The only time she hadn't been, of all the occasions he'd laid eyes upon her, was when he had escorted her to that aborted dinner at La Chateau Julienne, and though she had been wearing a striking gown, the occasion had been very much a public affair.

He'd only been in her apartment twice before. Her position as an unmarried woman - woman priest very much 'in the public eye' - demanded the utmost discretion. Therefore those two occasions had been at holiday parties - and her attire had never caused him to stand like a department store dummy with his mouth hanging open, not like it had tonight.

And the worst thing - the _worst_ thing - was that he could not _resist_ giving in to the temptation to take advantage of Shav's position, seated facing Abby as he stood between them, she leaning slightly forward in her attentive manner, her halter gaping slightly and she didn't realize he could see -.

"_DAMN_!" he explodes to his feet, hurtles the sheet aside. Ever since that stolen moment he hadn't been able to get the woman - his _friend_ - out of his mind!

It isn't like they were still teenagers - this is _worse_! He knows she would never want him to think of her like that _ever _again - knows she wouldn't want him to violate his self-imposed barriers. And yet every time he closes his _eyes_ he sees –.

"What in God's name am I going to do?" he mutters, not sure he _wants_an answer.

xxx

"Goodnight," Siobhan tells Abby, turning off the lamp, the heavy blackout curtains helping to plunge the room into total blackness. For the first time in two days Abby feels comfortable.

"Abby?" she feels a hand on her shoulder, gently shaking her, "Abby? It's time to get up. Breakfast is ready."

She forces her eyes open, squinting at the bright sunlight streaming in through the open drapes. Looking up, she sees her hostess dressed in a deep pink robe. "What time is it?"

"Seven thirty five."

This is enough to startle her awake. "I'm usually up by six!" she exclaims, sitting up.

"Did you sleep well?" Siobhan asks, hardly feeling she needs to.

"I slept the sleep of the totally _exhausted_!"

"I gathered that," she says with a wry smile. "This is the third time I've woken you."

"I'm _sorry_," she exclaims, but the woman waves it off, "but I can't remember the last time I felt so safe."

"Thank you." She looks at the clock on her night table. "You've just got enough time for a shower before I finish making breakfast."

Abby starts to get up, but then something pierces her sleep addled mind, "I thought you said breakfast was ready."

"A little white fib," Siobhan admits, shrugging. "We're all 'hard wired' to wake up when breakfast is 'ready'."

xx

Abby steps out of the shower and, from the radio set on a small shelf across the small room, she hears Sarah Brightman's rendition of 'Tell Me On A Sunday'. As she listens to the plaintive song of lost love and the plea for a softening of the pain of separation, she realizes that in it is the answer she's been missing. She can, all too easily, picture herself saying these words to Tim McGee, pleading for his easing of the torture she's been suffering all summer, even while knowing it is truly over between them.

She finishes dressing with a black miniskirt and tee shirt bearing white spine, rib cage and a red heart. Her metal studded gauntlets encase her wrists and she's pulled her hair into twin pigtails. She enters the kitchen to find Siobhan putting links of sausage onto two plates already loaded with scrambled eggs. "I think I've made up my mind," she admits without preamble. "You were all right."

"In what way?"

"Dawn tells me I should let him go. Tim says I should be happy for him and Ziva and let him go. You let me see my own heart, that I should let him go. _Sarah Brightman_ says I should let him go…."

Siobhan looks at her curiously, this last unexpected, but: "So what are you going to do?"

Abby shrugs, helpless, "I'm going to let him go. I'm going to _try_ to be happy for them," she sighs, "and if they ever do get married I _guarantee_ you that I'll cry at their wedding."

xxx

"Thank you for everything." Abby tells her friend by the door, hugging her and kissing her cheek.

In contrast to the skeletal black tee shirt and black miniskirt Abby wears, Siobhan is dressed in her 'uniform' of black skirt and light blue back-button shirt, the collar of which is an inch high band of stiff immaculate white encircling her throat.

Abby has already called Tim while Siobhan was dressing, telling him she's ready. He is still assigned to 'Protection Detail', that vigilance not to relax until she is safely on the Naval Yard, ensconced in her lab and under the protection of the entire NCIS.

"Are you going to be okay?"

Abby pauses. "I hope so. Last night I was able to forget I have a maniac stalking me and paying hit men to kill me and everyone around me. Now I can't forget anymore. But," she looks around the apartment that had been her sanctuary for a few hours, "I think I'm going to be okay. I've got a lot of friends looking out for me, and I'm so glad you're one of them," she finishes, drawing the woman into another hug.

"I'll pray for you," Siobhan assures her before they part.

"Thank you."

As they break, the theme from 'The Munsters' starts playing from inside her black bag. She pulls it out, seeing Siobhan's grin. "Yes, daddy," she tells Tim. A few moments later, "be right down." She closes the unit. "Well, again, thanks for everything."

"You're very welcome. And remember what Joshua tells you; 'Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go'."

"Thank you. I'll try," she promises.

"And if you need to come back, you're welcome to that too."

"I'm so tempted. I don't have nearly enough 'dirt' on Tim," she finishes with a grin.

"Well, get down there before you give him grey hair."

"I like grey hair. It's sexy - on some men."

x

Downstairs Tim meets her by the door and she hugs him, picturing the young man with the much fuller head of hair and leaving him to wonder about the intensity of her look. His car is parked across the street by the corner of the next block. They cross to it, but before Abby gets into the car she halts her friend.

"Tim, before we go there's something I want to tell you and I'd really appreciate your not interrupting me until I finish."

"Okay," he grants with a measure of apprehension. Lately every time she wants to tell him something serious, it turns out to be something he doesn't want to hear.

"I've been a perfect _Bitch_," she declares, surprised that it feels good to finally be able to admit it. "I still love you and I couldn't let you go, despite what you wanted, despite what people have been telling me, despite everything. I couldn't bear to have lost you, couldn't see that I _hadn't_ lost you but that I was driving you away instead.

"I couldn't stand the fact that I made a huge mistake when I couldn't deal with your wanting to commit all that time ago, and when I was finally ready you had moved on. I tried to fight for you, refusing to realize that when you love someone you don't fight for them. I couldn't let you go, couldn't let what we had all that time ago go. I've been a bitch to Ziva - though God knows I still think she _deserves_ it - but I've also been hurting you by sticking you between us.

"Ducky tried to wise me up, you did, Gibbs did, Dawn did, Siobhan did, _Sarah Brightman_ did - _never mind_! The point is they've finally convinced me that I've made an utter ass of myself and risked our friendship because I couldn't let go of our - of my - love."

She takes a deep breath and forces herself to say it. "I want you to know that I'm _done_. I give. I'm not going to come between you and her anymore." She's run herself out of words. "There. I've said it."

She awaits his sentence.

x

Tim comes around the car to her and she stands stiffly, "Abby, I've cared for you since the day I first met you and that's not going to change no matter how I feel about others." She feels a vast relief wash over her. "I admit I'm relieved - I was feeling pretty tense about you all Summer - but I _promise _you we will always be friends."

There had been a time, so recently, when those words stung her breaking heart. Now they hearten and strengthen her instead. She puts his arms about him, drawing him into a hug. "Thank you."

He's relieved, having been carrying this tension for so many weeks, not wanting to hurt either woman.

She kisses his cheek, then reluctantly pulls away, trying to smile as sincerely as she can, and though her voice is glib it barely masks a still wounded heart. "We'd better go. You're still on 'Protection Detail," she 'reminds' him. They shouldn't be standing out on the street, not only for the possible immediate danger, but in case this place should ever be needed as a 'safe house' again.

He turns and opens the car door for her.

x

"Tell me one thing," she asks, not getting in, "did you know this when you brought me over?"

"I did not. But Siobhan's a perceptive woman."

"I'll say," but before she gets into the car, she holds up her hands. "Wait!" She tugs out her cell phone from her pocket, presses a combination she'd programmed last evening and turns, looking back to the opposite corner and up toward the sixth floor windows. From this angle they can see both the front and side of the building. Since its neighbors aren't as tall, the top floor has an unobstructed view in every direction. She listens to the ringing, then; "Hi; it's me."

//_Hi_. Long time no hear,// comes the jovial response.

"I just wanted to thank you. It went easier than I thought."

//Any time,// the woman assures her.

Abby catches Tim's look. "Oh, Tim says 'hello'," she relays the message back, and then looks up again at the high top floor apartment, "anyway, I just called to say - again - 'thanks for everything'."

//You're very welcome.//

"If I can ever do anything for you, just let me know."

//Count on it,// It sounds like a promise she intends to redeem.

"Bye."

//Bye.//

The explosion rocks the street. Burning debris flies outward on tendrils of expanding flame.

They stare in horror as Siobhan's apartment is consumed by hellfire!


	10. Fury

Chapter Ten  
Fury

Tim's heart is wrenched out as the explosion gives way to inferno. His oldest and dearest friend can't be dead! She _can't _be _dead_!

He runs across the street, all thought gone. Siobhan, so full of life and love, is dead! Right in front of him! _She can't be dead_!

He runs between flaming debris that fall about him. He doesn't hear Abby's cries. He won't hear her!

Nothing - no one - could have survived that blast! The top floor is a torch. Car and store alarms, rocked by the explosion, fill the air with their discord.

Abby, running after him, skids to a halt on the corner. Nothing can be done but Tim charges the door, "_McGee_," she yells, "there's _nothing _you–"

He ignores her, rips the door open and is driven back several steps as Siobhan collides with him. McGee's arms fly about the woman in the impact and tighten in a fierce hug as the world miraculously comes back. He doesn't care why or how, he clings to her, holds to the miracle. Abby runs to them, throws her arms about the pair in a tight group hug. Other tenants from the floors below Siobhan's run past them from the jarred and burning building.

McGee clutches Siobhan almost too tightly. Disbelief and relief turn the galaxy inside out for the second time in moments. When he can think, can relax his grip only enough so she can gasp for air, she still clings tightly to him. About them other tenants run past them.

"How did you get out of there?" McGee demands, but she is barely recovered from the initial fright and can't hear or answer him.

"We were just _talking _to each other," Abby exclaims, relieved and astonished she is alive, still clinging to them both.

Her words make Siobhan realize she's still holding her cell phone in her hand. She'd heard and felt the explosion that shook everything while she was on the stairs. Terrified, she'd run down the final flight. But as she gets her breath back in the grip of her friends she looks up to find the cause of the terrible fright. Her apartment is blazing atop the structure like a mad torch.

x

"Call forwarding," she answers shakily, staring up at the inferno, answering the question which had finally filtered through. "I was coming downstairs when you - my apartment," she stares, unable to fully take the reality. "That's my …." Sudden realization slams her. "_Peter_!" she shrieks, tears suddenly in her eyes.

McGee turns to Abby, horrified. "Someone _else __was _up there?"

Abby shakes her head, "Saint Peter's her fish." She sees recollection dawn in his eyes.

"Yes," Siobhan gasps, struggling to regain control of her fragmented mind. Her emotions are still chaotic, she's not sure what she's feeling. The first sirens grow in the air and they become aware of the growing crowd of the displaced and the curious. Everyone about them tries to take in the devastation in a welter of loss or curiosity. What's left of the top floor of the building is a huge torch. Thick black smoke flows from every window, "Just a fi– but my apart–"

"Abby, stay with her, I have to establish a perimeter, make sure no one strolls off with bomb fragment souvenirs and call this in." He leaves them to do what one man can against the growing devastation even as the first red firefighting units scream onto the block.

Abby, not sure what she can do, draws the trembling woman into a protective hug. She's shaken by her realization that this is a reversal of their roles of just hours ago, and that this devastation of Siobhan's life is her fault.

Siobhan had shown her friendship and hospitality, given her safety - and this is how she's been repaid.

xxx

Official vehicles and gold badges give the NCIS Investigators right-of-way through police barricades, fire trucks and ambulances, the latter of which are fortunately only needed to deal with composing frightened tenants. The area, cordoned off by the police throughout the intersection, has cut off traffic. A four square block range is frozen, the area wide enough to encompass all the debris covering the street. Some of it Siobhan O'Mallory can barely recognize as fragments of things she used to own.

When Gibbs and the others force their way through the crowd and into the cordoned area they're intercepted by Metro Police Lieutenant Henry DuBois and Fire Chief Sam Grezwitz.

"What happened, Grez?" Gibbs asks, keeping his tension and apprehension tightly masked. He knows from McGee's call that no one had been hurt - an amazing thing as he looks up at the conflagration being fought on all sides by ladders and long reaching hoses.

"Your man tells us it was a bomb, but that's not the half of it, L.J.," the gray haired, square faced Chief tells his friend. "You don't get this much damage from one explosive unless its powerful enough to shear off the entire floor. I'd say you're looking at three, maybe four, but we'll have to get in there with the Fire Inspectors to really be sure. For now, you didn't hear a thing from me."

Gibbs nods, accepting the reservation. He's just glad no one's dead.

The battle with the blaze continues, black smoke billowing from the many former windows. The main focus, he can see, is restricting the blaze to the fifth floor - the top one is gone.

x

"They were talking on the phone," McGee reports a few moments later, stepping beside Gibbs. In the back open door of the open ambulance a few yards away Siobhan O'Mallory sits beside Abby. They can see she's trembling, a blanket and Abby's arm about her shoulders. "The instant the line cut out the entire apartment exploded. It looked like there was explosive in every room, everything blew at once. I didn't see any variation in the intensity of the explosion." Normally this would be hard to tell, but that instant is seared into his mind.

He'd been in her apartment twice before. If the bomb was near the telephone, which was in the living room, there should have been less effect out the bedroom windows.

DiNozzo steps beside them, looking at the two women huddled together. "How are they?"

"Neither was hurt," McGee allows, "neither is good."

Gibbs turns to the Fire Chief, already knowing it will be a while before any investigation can begin, as McGee returns to Siobhan seated in the ambulance door. The Fire Inspectors will investigate this, being far more experienced and having clear jurisdiction. It does not matter that the near victims are NCIS, or that this relates to a current case. They'll share information, but under FD control.

"I want a copy of the Investigator's Report as soon as its ready, Grez."

Grezwitz knows this is personal "I'll see you get it, L.J."

xx

Gibbs, having learned what little is available, goes to the ambulance. When Abby sees him she stands up and hugs him unreservedly. He doesn't push her away, but his attention is divided. Siobhan sits on the deck of the open door, a blanket clutched tightly about her. She doesn't take her eyes off her apartment or the firefighters' battle to contain the conflagration.

McGee stands beside her, his hand on her shoulder, trying to be supportive in a situation where support is non-existent. Gibbs looks back up to the burning building on the opposite corner. Anything not destroyed in the initial blast is being obliterated in the uncontrolled blaze.

Gibbs sends Abby to Tony, Ziva and Michelle , who await her statement while he goes to the Priest. When he steps before her the woman looks up at him blankly, says nothing. Her eyes are filled with uncertainty, as though she's trying to place a barely familiar face. "Special Agent Gibbs," he 'introduces' himself.

She shakes her head sharply, the jolt seeming to go down through her whole body, "Yes, yes, I - I know who you are," she breathes shakily.

He can see she's trying to throw off lingering shock, "I'm sorry about your apartment."

"Someone - someone tried to kill me," she can barely take it in, despite the thought searing through her mind a thousand times already, "someone tried to _kill_ me." She latches onto this thought, clinging to mounting anger. She focuses on it, lets rage take her. The fire helps to dispel the disassociated feeling so she lets the anger have her. "He tried to kill Abby, but he _blew up _my_ apartment_ to do it!"

The anger feels good, dispels the cloud of shock.

x

She thinks of the thousand things she wants to say, the things she can lash out in anger with, but though she screams them in her mind she forces herself to silence. None of them are more important than "He tried to _kill us_!"

Gibbs scans the still growing crowd which watches the burning building and the efforts of the firefighters. He knows how often the perpetrator of such acts remains to enjoy the spectacle. "Mother O'Mallory," she turns to him and he truly hates to have to say it, "frequently an arsonist will stay behind. Is there anyone here you don't recognize from the neighborhood?"

Tim wants so badly to protest that this isn't a good time, but he knows Gibbs is right. This is possibly the only time.

"You want me to ID my neighbors?" Siobhan asks, incredulous, her voice driven down to an appalled whisper; "ID my _neighbors_?" The last of her shock is burned off by anger that finally finds expression. "My apartment is on _f__ire_! I help out Abby by letting her stay the night and then someone tried to _kill_ us, Peter who I _l__oved_ is dead -" she rises, throws off the blanket and McGee's hand and lets the fire out "- and you want me to do a head count of the people in this neighborhood?"

She steps closer until they are inches apart, her face growing as red as her fiery hair, rage keeping her voice low, not letting her break to yell the words; "Let me _tell_ you about my neighbors! They're decent, hardworking, honest people who don't _deserve_ this anymore than _I_ do! There's Ben Kingman who has a heart condition; it's a wonder he didn't have an _attack_! Hugh and Kimberly Zantos have three children I don't even _see_! They may never be able to get back into their apartment if they don't get that fire under control; _forget_ the water damage," she stands with her fists clenched tightly at her sides, her body trembling, every muscle tight with fury; "and you're asking me not how any of them _are _or where anyone is going to _live _but if I can ID the one who _blew up_ my apartment? Well, no, I _can't_, you - you–"

"Bastard?" he offers.

"_Bastard_ only begins it, you *!"

Tim's eyes widen round and his mouth drops open. He feels his face redden as Siobhan continues for a long breath before sliding into Gaelic....

xx

Abby sits on the hood of Tim's car talking to her friends. Her conscience stabs her as they try to make some sense of what's happened.

"It is obvious that whoever planted the bomb did so after you both went to sleep," Ziva concludes.

"More than one bomb," Abby corrects her. "That explosion came from more than one bomb, every room went up at once." Her face pales as the full ramifications hit her. "But that means whoever broke in planted bombs in every room, even in the bedroom while we were asleep. And Siobhan's a light sleeper, or so she tells me."

She's unaware she's arguing both sides of the question.

"Whoever did this is good," DiNozzo concludes. "He got in, wired everything to the telephone. He probably used transmitters to link them to go off at the same time."

"But why'd he rig the phone?" she protests. "He couldn't be sure either of us would answer it unless _he_ made the call - and he didn't all morning. He had all night from the time he rigged it until my call set it off."

"He probably set detonators in every room," Ziva theorizes. "Turn on a lamp, a radio, the television and _boom._"

"No," DiNozzo won't credit it. "Too elaborate, too slipshod. If he's not going to set it off himself, why go to such elaborate setup on the chance one of them _might_ set it off?"

"If one of the bombs was in the bedroom -"

"Under the bed?" Michelle follows Ziva's reasoning.

"- then why not just put a bullet in each of their heads as they slept?"

"Thanks a _lot_!" Abby exclaims.

"No, Ziva's got it;" Tony maintains, "a super-elaborate trap one of you _might_ set off, which wasn't set off until after you were gone, when two bullets would do the job. That's–"

"_Kahn_!"

"What?"

"Kahn! He doesn't just want me dead, he wants to _hurt_ me. If I - if Siobhan hadn't been on the stairs _I'd_ have killed her! And even if I didn't, the first call she took would have today, tomorrow, whenever. He doesn't just want _me_ dead - he's killing everyone arou–"

She gasps in fright: "_Dawn_!" She casts about frantically, there are cordons everywhere, traffic is diverted all around them, ambulances and fire units block everything. "I've gotta get to the _hospital_!"

"Abby–" Tony tries to make her see reason, but she clutches his arm.

"_You've gotta get me to the hospital_!"

"What's this?" Gibbs, arriving behind the frantic woman, demands. She turns on him, eyes wild.

"Gibbs, you've gotta get me to the Hospital!"

"She believes Dawn Caldwell is going to be targeted again," Michelle tells him less dramatically as Abby clutches Gibbs' arm.

"Please, Gibbs, _please_!"

x

The day may come when Leroy Gibbs will turn Abby down, but today is not it. He leads the frantic woman to his car. It takes only a few moments to escape the cordoned scene. Having faith the pleading woman Gibbs bends, twists and warps the laws of the physical universe getting his car through mid-morning traffic. The hospital is miles away. They arrive in less than six minutes.

As soon as they pull into the lot across from the main entrance she flings the door open and dashes to the building. Terror lends Mercury's wings to her feet as she bursts through the front door, distains the elevator as too slow and takes the stairs three at a time to the fourth floor. She runs through the upper corridors to the far side of the building, leaves commotion in her wake until she bursts through Dawn's door.

x

Michael and Doris Caldwell are as startled as their daughter as the door explodes inward and Abby skids to a halt.

She's so relieved to find Dawn safe, so breathless from her run that she can't speak. She clutches the foot of the bed, gasps deep draughts of air. She can't explain even as two Hospital Security Officers burst in, followed by two white coated men and finally Gibbs.

"Federal Agents, it's all right," he announces far more calmly than Abby can pant, shows his gold badge and gradually reestablishes order. Abby leans against the wall, her breath gradually slowing.

"Would someone mind explaining," Michael Caldwell asks, "what's going on?"

"I thought - thought Dawn -," Abby pants, her chest heaving. She can't push off the wall, feels her racing heart slow as she gasps, "Dawn might - be in - danger!"

"Only of being run over," he says blandly, takes her arm and pulls her to a chair. "Here, sit down before you fall down."

x

Michael Caldwell is the same height as Gibbs, his blonde hair having gone completely white some years ago. Doris considerably shorter, still blonde, stout of heart and body. When Abby is seated, knowing her friends are looking at her like she's a maniac and not caring, Michael introduces his family to the only apparent source of reason among the sudden visitors.

"I trust you have a better explanation for this … whatever?"

"And why my _baby _-," the woman beside the bed exclaims passionately "- is hurt _every time_ NCIS shows up!"

x

Explanations for Abby's precipitous arrival calm no one. Dawn, of course, is glad to see her friend but is distressed to hear about the attempt on the life of Siobhan O'Mallory. She'd met her so briefly at the aborted dinner so few evenings ago.

Gibbs knows that the relationship between Abby and the Caldwell family had started nearly twenty years ago when she was hired to baby-sit for the young child Dawn. But the past few days has strained that relationship; at least in the eyes of her parents.

"I told you!" Doris cries, her case proven.

"That's not fair, mom," Dawn admonishes.

"_Every time_!" she insists. "First you're raped, then you're beaten and left for dead; and all because Abby Sciuto joined NCIS!"

"Mother!" Dawn's both exasperated and embarrassed, "Abby had _nothing_ to do with what happened at the lake, other than _helping_ me when I called her. And as for my being in her apartment - _she_ was the target, not me."

"Just the same!" All she cares about is that her baby's injuries are NCIS' fault.

"No, not 'just the same'. Whatever's happening, it's not Abby's fault."

"Tell that to the woman whose _apartment_ was just blown up!"

x

Dawn winces at the stricken look in her friend's eyes. She hardly needs nearly twenty years of friendship to recognize the deep guilt and pain Abby feels.

"Do you know who's doing this?" her father asks Gibbs, trying to get the conversation away from recriminations.

"We have every available Agent out trying to find information."

"_In other words, 'No'_!"

"Doris, _please_!"

"No, she's right; at the moment we–" Gibbs' phone rings. He pulls it out and answers it briefly.

//Agent Frank Costello, sir. Metro PD has a hit on your BOLO.//

He steps a few feet away. "Go."

//They've found the car used in the Erica Paulson murder; arrested four men in a 24 hour Clinic on Canal Street. One of them has a gunshot wound in his shoulder,// he gives him the address. //The Director and Police Captain 'chatted'; they're being delivered here.//

"Thanks, Costello," he closes the phone, returning his attention to Doris Caldwell. "We do have suspects, excuse me." He walks out before Abby can move, forcing her to get up and chase him into the hall.

x

"Gibbs!" she calls, halting him. "What's _up_?"

"Metro has the four who killed your double."

She takes a step after him. "I'm coming."

"They think they killed you. For now I want them to keep thinking that, give me the chance to lean on them."

"Yeah, but can't I watch you lean?"

Gibbs doesn't want her there. He'd prefer she stay with her friends, but one of the attacks had taken place right outside the door of this hospital. He doesn't trust Hospital Security to guard her before he can have an Agent on duty. "Say your 'goodbyes', tell them I'm having Lefkowitz assign 24-hour security, then come fast."

One thing Abby knows very well, when Leroy Jethro Gibbs says 'fast', he means fast. Wondering how she can cram a thousand words into ten seconds, she returns to the room.

x

"I have to go," she apologizes.

"Goodbye." There's no warmth in Doris Caldwell's tone. She doesn't even look at her. Abby gives up, goes to her friend, takes her hand.

"Metro PD found the men who killed my twin."

"_What_?"

Abby bites her lip, realizing she has left a lot of these past days out. "I'll explain later, I promise," she glances at the door - Gibbs isn't going to wait. "I promise."

"Well, you'd better be fast," Doris snaps. "When Dawn is off this bed we're going home. If you're not here to say 'goodbye' that's too _bad_!"

"_Mother_!" Dawn is so exasperated she can't find the words, but the hurt on Abby's face stings her conscience. "You'll know ahead of time - I promise."

"I'll be back, Sunshine."

Dawn smiles up at her, "I know."

A quick, tight loving hug and Abby is running again.


	11. Autopsy

Chapter Eleven  
Autopsy

Both Interrogation Rooms wouldn't be enough to hold all four suspects from 'Abby's' ambush but neither is needed. Shackled hand and foot the four men, none of whom is even twenty, are brought by eight grim Agents into the darkness of Autopsy. Chains on their ankles allow short steps while shorter chains hold their hands at heavy leather belts. One of them, his left arm and shoulder wrapped, inspires no sympathy from those who await them.

A single light is on, and it illuminates only the nude body of a black haired young woman, the harsh light exposing her widely opened chest. The incisions began near her shoulders, met just above her breasts and a vertical cut all the way to her crotch has opened her chest and stomach wide.

'Abby' lies still, her black wig restored, her inner organs grayed with lost blood. The nearly silent air exhausts have been turned off and the black chamber is ripe with death. Ducky and Palmer are used to it, the Agents experienced enough to tolerate it and show nothing. The four young men receive its full impact.

Beyond the green garbed Medical Examiner and grim faced Senior Agent three men and a woman stand barely distinguishable in the shadows. The four prisoners are forced forward and stopped within the light, the spread corpse open inches from their stomachs. The blackness of the grave mingles about them with the stench of death. The holes tracing the paths of bullets through her organs are clear in the bright directed light. Her rib cage has been cut open, the ribs removed to a tray above her head. Her heart, lungs and other organs are grey, blood having escaped or settled toward her back. The sight and stench slam the would-be men and nauseates them. No one cares.

"These are the four who murdered Abby?" the Medical Examiner asks in a voice from deep in the black sepulcher.

"They are," DiNozzo answers from the blackness, an Executioner's tone.

"_This _is Abby Sciuto," the man's words are devoid of mercy, devoid of compassion, devoid of _humanity_. "She was one of us. She was NCIS. She was our _friend_."

He glances up at the tall, grim man beside him. "I've never done four at the same time. They seem to be healthy enough. You're sure they won't be missed?"

"Metro PD has lost their files," Gibbs assures him. "Our computer man is losing everything else about them, everything from birth and Social Security numbers through today." One of the men tries to back away, the two Agents behind him hold him firmly pressed against the metal table. The Examiner picks up a scalpel, the silver tool gleaming in the powerful, directed light.

"They'll do for Medical Research." He reaches into the woman's chest. Cutting carefully but skillfully, he severs vital connections and lifts 'Abby's' heart out of her chest, leaving several inches of artery. "Hearts are valuable these days."

Each of the four tries to talk faster than his fellows.

xx

When the men have confessed to everything they can think of, they are dragged out to 'the Processing Rooms'. No hint is given if their confessions will be enough. Tony brings the lights up, Palmer turns the air conditioning and exhausts up to full power, far higher than usual. The machinery clears the air rapidly while Ducky addresses Erica Paulson, "I'm very grateful to you, my dear, for your assistance," he tells her sincerely. "Thank you. I shall not forget your kindness."

"Absolutely incredible," Gibbs mutters. By this point in his life he had thought he had seen the depths of human depravity; now he has to admit there are depths he hadn't wanted to fathom.

"Dirtbags deserve what they get," Ziva declares angrily, wishing Ducky had not been acting.

"A thousand dollars to split between them to kill a woman they've never seen before," DiNozzo vents his own outrage, better than letting the others see how sick he is. "They don't know who she is or why they were hired to 'whack' her, just that it was a thousand cash."

"They had the nerve to think it was unfair I shot at them." McGee also vents his outrage. He had declared that these men would die by his hand, a reason he had left his Sig in the desk upstairs. If they had been stupid enough to try anything while shackled, at odds of better than three to one, hand to hand is still infinitely more satisfying.

"They did not expect someone to shoot at them or hit one of them while they were trying to escape," Ziva tells him, trying to cool his rage and not doing a good job. "They neither know nor care who hired them or why, just kept the cash they were given after the hit."

"At least this time we have a description," McGee grouses.

"Oh, yeah," Tony agrees, "it fits Melody Whitehurst's to a 'T'. He knew he didn't have to pay off Paulson. Her 'decoy salary' went to her own hit."

"DiNozzo, Ziva, see if you can get any more detail from Whitehurst."

"On it, boss."

x

The team walks out, completely disgusted, but as they step into the hall the elevator doors slide open and the real Abby Sciuto steps out. She stares at them, having watched everything on the monitor in her Lab, unable to find words.

"Hey," Gibbs asks, "you okay?"

She shakes her head and walks past them into Autopsy.

They watch her go through the doors, each of them wanting to follow and help, until Gibbs herds them into the elevator. This is a time, he knows, when he has to trust his friend.

xx

Ducky watches Abby come into the room and cross silently to the table on which Erica Paulson lies. The black wig still covers her blonde hair. "Without the tats, that's _me_ opened up," she says distantly, sensing Ducky stepping beside her rather than seeing him. All she can see is her twin. It's worse than the nightmares she had had three years ago. She'd dreamed of seeing herself opened wide on Ducky's table. Now it's real.

"She's dead because four _scumbags _were given two hundred fifty dollars each to 'whack' her. They didn't care who, how or why." She wipes tears from her eyes, smears black mascara from her right. Her voice is tight with emotion she can't express. "Two hundred fifty dollars, Ducky; that's all she was to them." She can't restrain her tears, can't wipe away the lines of black mascara that darken her cheeks. "Two hundred fifty dollars each; I gross that in a day." She looks to Ducky standing beside her, tears slipping down her cheeks. "Is she only worth what I make in a _day_? She had a _life_, Ducky; Robert Johnson had a life. He had a wife and a _baby_ - and he lost everything saving me. Michelle almost died. Siobhan almost died. It's not _right_! It's _not_!"

"Abigirl, there are no answers for this," Ducky admits regretfully, drawing up a blue sheet from beyond the woman's feet, covering her completely. "At least not any I can find."

"You _always_ have answers!" Her voice breaks, reduced to shuddering breaths as she stands trembling, fighting for control she cannot grasp. "Please! Please give me one. _Please_! Tell me why everyone around me is dying and suffering. _I_ should be on this table, not _her_. I think by tomorrow I will be, and then everyone will be safe - but I don't _want_ to be in here." He puts his arms around her, hugs her; tries to turn her away from the body of her twin, but she will not be turned. "I'm _scared_, Ducky! I'm scared out of my _mind_! This is worse than when I thought Mikel was stalking me, when the worst place I had to go was the elevator. Then it was just me; now it's my friends, those I _love_. _You_?" she asks in mounting distress, turns and grasps him, clings to him. "Oh Ducky, _I'd_ rather _die_ than have anything happen to _you_! _You_ don't deserve to die - _I_ do!"

He pushes her back gently but firmly, looks at her intently, his face carved from stone. She's gasping, unable to fight back her tears. "Now that's _enough_ of that," his voice is laden with such iron that he breaks through. "I'll not hear another word. I'm not going to say 'nothing will happen', but if it does then you know _this_: My time on this Earth has been full and well spent; and if I am to die, it would be my honor to die for you. But should it happen, I want _no_ recriminations from you against yourself. Do you understand me?"

"Ducky–" she gasps, trying to stop crying.

"Do you _understand_ me?"

She nods shakily, whispering, "yes."

x

"Fine. Then let us hear nothing more about either of us dying. Let us instead work on finding the solution so both of us may live."

"How?"

Holding her arms, he gives her a small shake. "Why, you're a Scientist, my dear. It's time to devote clear headed, rational, logical scientific analysis to this situation and to discern the identity of the prime mover."

He turns her away from her hidden twin, leads her to the doors of the cooling units. "Whoever is doing this has an extreme grudge against you coupled with a callous, utter disregard for human life and an overly developed flare for the dramatic. He employs henchmen: the bogus 'UPS' agent, food delivery man, a presently unknown driver and four would-be assassins. He goes out of his way to obtain a decoy simply for the purpose of causing grief and distress, with no regard whatsoever for her life. So far there seem, from the descriptions, to be at least five persons involved.

"It appears the only time the prime mover has definitely made an appearance is in Miss Paulson's case, knowing as he did that she would not survive to identify him. The identification given by her roommate was fair but does not match anyone in our records and Forensic evidence has been woefully inadequate." He turns her to face him, her back to the autopsy table.

"It appears we will have to wait some time for the Fire Department to conduct their investigation. I understand Reverend O'Mallory's building has been declared 'Unsafe'. Whoever destroyed that apartment, however, has knowledge both of explosives and trigger mechanisms, as well as the ability to enter her apartment while you both slumbered and wire the charges undetectably. Whomever we are seeking also has an overly developed sense of not only the dramatic but of the macabre, for if he wanted you dead, he would simply have shot you while you slept."

"So, Ducky," she asks, heartened by his analytical approach, knowing she should have been doing the same herself, "where does all this lead us?"

He looks at her quizzically, his manner utterly changing; "Why, I don't know, my dear. That's what we have Field Agents for."

Abby has been driven to the breaking point and now passes it. She starts to giggle and can't stop herself.

x

Gibbs strides through the still opening doors of Autopsy, quite surprised to find Ducky standing with Abby near the cooling units and to find her laughing. It's a pleasant, relieving surprise - but the smile fades from his face as he watches her. Her laughter gradually rises in pitch, becomes manic though Ducky, surprisingly, makes no attempt to get her to stifle it. She continues to laugh, louder and louder until she is shrieking hysterically, loses her balance and falls against the silver doors, clutches her stomach in pain as she continues laughing manically.

Ducky, still quite surprisingly, makes no move to help or restrain her as her legs give out and she slides down the smooth doors to the floor. Knees up and skirt rising to a very embarrassing position she continues laughing, barely able to draw enough breath.

As the bemused Agent approaches to stand at her other side, Abby's hysterical laughter gradually transmutes and she begins to cry. Her tears painful things, her grief heart wrenching and still Ducky does nothing. Her weeping escalates in violence, grows as intense as her 'mirth' had been. She buries her face into her arms crossed over her raised knees, sobbing brokenly. Misery destroys her and she screams, an unrestrained shriek of soul-tortured agony. Gibbs is about to bend to help, but Ducky signals him to hold back. Together the men stand over her as Abby's grief escalates in volume and force, building without relief or restraint until her body is wracked by terrible loud, hysterical sobs and she is wailing in heart wrenching grief.

But the grief is no longer pure. There's anger in those cries and wailing turns to screams of rage, of utter mindless fury. Screams rise in pitch and volume and still the men do nothing to comfort or stop her. Grief and rage shift back and forth like the tide.

x

It takes a very long, painful time but ultimately Abby reaches the point where she is unable to cry or scream anymore. She sags weakly, utterly spent and gasping for breath. Only then do the men crouch down on either side of her. "Hey," Gibbs calls softly, "you okay now?"

She nods minimally, too weak for more. Though her emotions are exhausted, he doesn't like the look in her red eyes.

"When was the last time you slept?"

"Last night I had a good sleep," she admits softly, "before that bastard _blew up the bed!_" She manages to look up at him. "How's Siobhan?" She hadn't gotten an answer earlier from the church.

"Father Donaldson and some people from the church came around and collected her. She'll be staying in the Rectory from now on. She'll be all right." He doesn't mention how upset she'd been. Earlier on the street, before she's shifted away from English, she'd dredged up words he hadn't heard since he'd been in uniform. He suspects McGee's ears must still be ringing.

"I'll bet Donaldson was pissed," she sighs, having no strength for anything more.

Gibbs shakes his head. "That doesn't even qualify as an understatement. 'Fire and brimstone' doesn't come close." Neither had Donaldson come close to O'Mallory. His anger had been far less impassioned and his vocabulary far less astonishing to anyone who knew her.

Abby shakes her head, thinking of all the treasures in Siobhan's apartment - not in the monetary value but the greater sentimental. That Yearbook alone had been priceless, at least so she feels. "It's all my fault."

"No it isn't. She sent a message. She doesn't blame _you _for any of it."

"_I_ blame me."

Gibbs' hand to the back of her head barely nudges her uppermost hairs, just enough to get her attention. "Get up," he tells her with gentleness that belies his words.

She shakes her head.

"Sit on the floor with your legs up and your skirt about your waist on your own time. It's time to get to work."

His words are more effective in galvanizing her than any slap could be.

When she's on her feet she throws her arms about Gibbs, hugs him tightly as he holds her. A few moments later she turns to Ducky, draws him in as well. She realizes she's unable to separate in her own mind hugging from clinging.

xxx

When DiNozzo and McGee arrive on the porch of Melody Whitehurst's home they go on alert. The side door leading into the kitchen, which Tony had used earlier with Gibbs, is ajar. Pulling their Sigs, they brace in careful timing and DiNozzo pushes open the door.

Melody Whitehurst lies on her back three feet in from the door, eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. There is a small hole in the center of her forehead, but the blood that had flowed down either side of her forehead as her heart had stopped and the small pool behind her head have both grown dark and cold.

xx

"He's cleaning up the trail," Gibbs concludes as he looks down at the body Ducky and Palmer are examining. The agents inspect the kitchen, they will later move on to the rest of the house, the area Whitehurst had said their suspect had never reached. From Gibbs' point of view there will be little to find.

"I don't even think we'll find much beyond this point," DiNozzo unknowingly echoes his boss' thoughts as he lightly dusts the outer doorknob of the open door for fingerprints. "He may even be using one patsy to take out another. This looks like 'Souvlaki Delivery Guy's' work to me."

"Thank you, Special Agent DiNozzo," Lee says; lowering the large camera she had been using to photograph the room while McGee maintains the photo log. That is a memory she does not want back. She and Jimmy exchange uncomfortable glances when they think no one notices.

Gibbs notes this is the first time either has looked at the other since they'd entered the room and begun their jobs. Maybe, he concludes, he is right about their professionalism. Time will bear him out. In the meantime: "What can you tell me about the bullet?"

Ziva looks back from where she has just dug it out of the far wall. ".22 caliber; it did not penetrate more than an inch of wood after going through her head." She holds up the clear plastic container in which the metal fragment; dented to less than a third its normal length, rests. "Abby should be able to tell with certainty if it came from the same gun as 'Souvlaki Guy's'."

"The stippling on her face," Ducky points out as Ziva turns to secure the jar in the evidence bag, "are consistent with that. The gun was fired at point blank range. She seems to have opened the door - and died." He looks down into her open eyes, "I wonder if you even saw your killer."

"Believe me, Doctor Mallard," Michelle assures him, "the image was burned into her mind."

xxx

When Gibbs escorts Abby into the 'bullpen' three hours later, she nervously fiddling with her right pigtail, DiNozzo stands up. "_Campfire_!" he announces, returning to his own technique from the days when he had led the Team during Gibbs' 'retirement / leave / vacation'. He, McGee, David and Lee roll their chairs out and into the center of the common space, Gibbs pulls out his own and another for Abby. They assemble in a tight circle so closely their knees almost touch.

"I found microscopic traces of plastic on the videotape case," Abby tells them. Gibbs refrains from pointing out that the entire thing is plastic. "That's why there were no fingerprints, he must have worn heavy plastic gloves. Our latex doesn't completely obscure prints. He must have used them from the moment the tape was first unsealed from the factory plastic until it went into the UPS box."

"Very methodical," DiNozzo grants.

"All right," Gibbs says, his patience at the entire prolonged nightmare at an end, He takes the remote control, points it at the plasma screen and the image he'd fed to it before he'd left appears. The sketch obtained through the description by the late Melody Whitehurst appears. "This dirtbag has been one step ahead of us this whole time and has been leading us around by our noses. How?"

"Inside man?"

Every eye turns to Michelle.

"Well, that is," she shifts uncomfortably in her seat, her nerve deserting her. "That is, I–"

"Spit it out, Lee," Gibbs commands, having no patience for her diminishing confidence.

"Well, sir, it just occurred to me that maybe in looking through all our mug shots for a suspect we're choosing the wrong pictures. What if it's one of us?"

"_Bite your tongue_!" Abby explodes, leaps to her feet.

"I don't mean us _us_!" Michelle insists, facing down the irate stares of her seniors, "I mean us NCIS. There are _hundreds_ of Agents in this building alone - _all_ of whom have access to our records and to Abby. Maybe not everyone feels about her the way we do." She watches the thought take root in each of them. None of them like it.

"I'm just saying we're so quick to look outside for someone who has something against Abby, what about someone _in_side? Someone who can have access to special vehicles, someone skilled in covert operations; someone with knowledge of 'dirtbags' for hire. Someone who has access to bombs and can get into a place undetected and wire them so another NCIS Agent can't detect them. Someone who can know the home address of a brand new member and predict we'd use her place as a 'safe house'. Someone who can…." she trails off at Gibbs' upraised hand.

"Maybe he doesn't even need O'Mallory's address. Maybe he has other resources." He turns to Abby, who isn't about to hide her feelings. "What _one_ thing can you be sure to keep on your person at _all_ times?"

"My panties when Tony's around," she mutters, but then closes her eyes, embarrassed. "Sorry, Tony, that was lame."

DiNozzo waves it off, trying to show he is not put out.

Gibbs would have something to say, but the answer to his question has already presented itself. Reaching out, he plucks her black cell phone from her lab coat pocket. The device is small, decorated with a silver bat and he can't recall a time when it had been out of her reach. He tosses it to McGee, who requires no additional instructions. He takes it to his desk and begins using a set of tools from his desk drawer.

"Gibbs, you think somebody bugged my phone? How could they get it?"

"It's happened before," Michelle reminds her.

"How could whoever set those explosives get into O'Mallory's apartment while you were both there? You didn't call anyone to tell where you were. I didn't even let McGee tell _me_ where he was taking you," he reminds her. "You have Agents in and out of your lab every day."

"Well _sure_, I interact with ever - y - body," her voice trails off in horrified realization.

"All you'd need is a few minutes ignoring a visitor - and we all know how focused you can be."

"Yeah, but--" she turns to the plasma screen. "No. No - no - _no_ - No - _NO_! That is _Not_ an Agent! I have never seen that man in my _life_!"

"Special Agent McGee," Michelle calls to the man working behind her, looking back, lifting her hair to accentuate its fullness, "do I look like a Courtesan?"

"Well, no," he admits, "not now."

"But I did, during the Chen case." She turns back to the others. "Just a few touches of makeup were all it took to turn a Virgin into a Whore." When they look at the screen again, it's with new intensity.

"Boss?" McGee calls their attention over to his monitor, but then reconsiders; there's not enough room for all of them to crowd into the space. With a few keystrokes, he directs the feed to the large plasma screen in the middle of the room, replacing Tony's sketch.

Abby, the first one who had leapt to her feet and rushed over to his desk, sees that he's connected a wire to her disassembled phone, and turns to the image fed to the main screen. It shows a collection of buildings laid out in a very familiar pattern, a blinking red dot flashing exactly where she would have expected it to.

"He didn't 'bug' your phone, but he did lock the GPS tracking circuit on."

"Can that be done remotely, McGee?"

"It would require hacking into the phone company's computer, but yes. Do you want me to break the feed?" His fingers are already on the keys.

"_No_!" he says quickly. "_T__his_ is what I want you to do…."


	12. Trap

Chapter Twelve  
Trap

Gibbs, not reducing vigilance for a moment, even in the light of a plausible theory, sends Abby back to her lab. There she's to stay under Michelle Lee's protection. Until the theory is proven or this case ends, the Forensic Scientist will remain under 24 hour guard. In the meantime, the Agents focus their attentions upon a tiny red dot moving slowly north by northeast along New Hampshire Avenue out of Columbia Heights and approaching Grant Circle. If it continues on its present course, it'll cross the border into Maryland.

The moment Abby's cell phone, carried by Special Agents Russell Mavrides and Charles Fabrella, passed the main gate, the Naval Yard went into 'lockdown'. No departure would be hindered but each will be noted and carefully scrutinized in MTAC. Any vehicle headed in the same direction as the moving blip would be tracked and closely watched. If anyone took that same road it would initiate an unpleasant series of events.

x

As Abby and Michelle step into the Lab they are surprised to see someone standing by her workstation, looking into her microscope. Seen from the rear, they can only discern a man dressed in black jeans and a black leather jacket bent low, his face obscured, but to Abby he is an unpleasant intruder. Even beyond such stresses as she has had to endure, _no one_ touches her instruments without her permission. "Get _away_ from there!" she snaps, in no mood to be polite.

The man straightens, turns around and Abby feels her heart turn over in her chest. "_Oh Dear God_…" she breathes. She can actually feel her face go as white as her lab coat.

"Hello, Abby," Mike Mawher greets her with a lopsided grin.

x

Abby takes a step back and Michelle moves forward. She doesn't know this man, but anyone who can induce such fear into her charge is going down _hard_. In full 'bodyguard mode' Michelle advances, but is unprepared for what happens next. She expects the man, who's so gaunt he makes a mummy look the picture of health, to meet her challenge or try to evade. Instead he cringes, cowers from her in such abject terror she almost feels sorry for him.

"_Wait_!" he cries, "I don't wanna hurt anybody!"

"Too bad. I _do_!"

He back-peddles away from her; more scared than Abby had been to see him. "Wait - wait - wait - please - I come in _peace_!"

"And you'll leave in _pieces_!" she declares, but the fight is going out of her. Well trained in various martial arts, she can't fight an opponent who's so patently helpless. She barely needs to hear Abby calling her off, she can't press an attack upon an ineffectual, retreating, cringing _coward_!

She stops, having backed him nearly flat against the wall. "How did you get in here?" she demands, seeing the plastic coated 'NCIS Visitor' pass clipped to his shirt.

"They let me on the base! Here!" he grabs the pass, pulls it closer to her. "See?"

Exasperated, Abby stalks up to him, but is still cautious enough to get no closer than next to Michelle. "Mike Mawher, you've pulled some _bonehead_ stunts, but this is the … _stupidest_ ever! This entire base is on Alert, I'm fighting for my life," she reaches out, snatches the pass from his shirt and examines it closely, "and you _hack__ yourself__ another__ drive-on_!" She backhands him hard. The pass flies out of her hand as he turns to the wall, holding his cheek.

She's furious, having lashed out at him with tongue and hand, the latter feeling quite good against her tension. But when he doesn't turn around again a part of her starts to feel guilty. He looks like death warmed over and left to rot. He has lost fifty pounds he couldn't afford to lose and cowers before two women, one barely 80 percent his height.

"What the _Hell_ are you doing here?" Guilt does not go far enough to keep her from exploding.

He looks back from the wall, holding his cheek. "They said you were in danger!"

"And you came to save me?" It's too familiar a story.

He turns to her, and the image is utterly pathetic. "Yes! I came to _save_ you!"

Abby takes a step back, exasperation warring with fury and both about to win. She tries her best to adopt a reasonable tone. Clenching her fists tightly at her side seems to help. "Mike, I'm going to tell you this _once_: Get out of here! If you leave now and never come back we'll pretend you were _never_ here and Gibbs won't beat you to death with a baseball bat."

They watch as he straightens, visibly gathering his dignity. "If that's the way you want it."

"That's the way I want it."

"You do know that 'never come back' is a real thing. I'm dying - did they tell you? I have only a little while left. AIDS, you know."

"Yes," she says softly, starting to regret her outburst. There had been a time when they had been friends. And even last time, he had not been trying to _hurt_ her… though she's not about to forget the 'suicide note' and trust him, "They told me; and I'm sorry. I wish--"

"Don't say it Abby," he steps away from the wall, heads for the door past Michelle. There's no fight in him, only morose defeat. "It's really too late to say anything."

xx

Gibbs, DiNozzo and David are clustered around the plasma screen, attentively to the progress of Abby's cell phone. It's almost made it out of the District. No signals from the gates, no alert from MTAC. It could be that whoever is tracking the signal is waiting for it to stop, but if it crosses the State line without a hit Gibbs is ready to call the operation a 'bust'.

"Boss!" McGee wrests their attention to his desk.

"What is it, McGee?"

"Boss, something Lee said about 'Virgin to Whore' got me thinking."

"Make appointments on your own time, Probie," DiNozzo admonishes.

McGee scowls at him. "Make-up! I've been running traces on his credit cards. The one in his business name and address shows courses starting a year ago in Theatrical Make-Up Design and multiple purchases of supplies from Theatrical Houses."

"_Whose_ card?" Gibbs demands.

McGee touches a button and the map and red blip are replaced by a split screen. On the right is DiNozzo's sketch from Whitehurst's description of the one who had set up Erica Paulson, on the left is Ziva's cell phone photo taken surreptitiously at 'Krime Kleeners Inc.' As they watch, Mikel Mawher's gaunt face fills out and morphs into a living replica of the sketch.

"_Gear up_!"

xx

As Mawher passes Michelle he pivots, one hand wraps in her long hair, the other under her chin and he twists hard, her shriek aborted. She falls hard to the floor as Abby backs away in horror as Mawher turns on her. In the first dreadful instant Abby fears he has snapped Michelle's neck but she writhes in pain on the floor. "I thought my 'Wrath of Kahn' was really inspired." His tone is casual, self-complimentary, hardly fitting a rational person a moment after nearly murdering someone.

"_Why_?" Abby cries, backing away as Michelle, unable to raise her head against the intense pain, fights to get up. Mawher's grin chills her soul. His eyes are alight with madness no longer hidden. "You _loved_ me!" she cries. Of all the multitude of suspects, he's the last one she would have suspected, not after Gibbs had 'cleared' him.

"You stupid _bitch_, don't you get it?" he asks, advancing on her, backing her away toward her office, "it was _always_ about you. I loved you, yes; and how did you repay my love? You _betrayed_ me!"

He leaps for her - she tries to duck away but he grabs her pigtail, yanks her back, her shriek cut off by his hands tight about her throat! She tries to pry his hands loose as they tighten murderously and she gags for breath. He barely seems to strain, his smile joyful, yet his hands crush her throat.

"I'm dying, did you know that?" he asks with astonishing ease, grinning at her. His face is inches from hers as Abby strains to gasp, pulling at his hands, held immobile by his insane strength as he crushes her neck. Her punches and frantic struggles useless against him. She feels her face turn red, the blood roars in her ears as his hands tighten even more. "But before I go, I'm sending you on _ahead_!"

She gets her hands up, her long nails rake his face hard, cut across his left eye. He roars in pain and she slips free, dashes for her office, gasps for breath to fill her starved lungs, shaking with terror. Through the sliding door she sees him shake off her desperate defense, eight bloody lines gouged down his face. Frantic, she digs into the pocket of her white coat, tears free the small silver control box Gibbs had ordered created for her safety. Pointing it at the door, she stabs the red button hard. The transparent door slides shut, the normal series of rapid beeps replaced by a higher pitched tone as the door seals. She knows that at this moment alarms blare in Operations and the MP Station.

Slapping the video intercom control button on her desk, ready to cry out for help, she is horrified by the image displayed upon it. The 'bullpen' is _empty_! In the rest of the room, various Agents look about, some call Security, all seek the cause of the unfamiliar alarm.

x

The transparent door shudders with a sharp '_crack_' and she turns around. Her heart leaps into her throat as she sees a circular web of fractures. Mawher hefts her stool and takes another powerful swing. A second web of cracks appears below the first.

Desperate, Abby scrabbles through her desk for anything she can use as a weapon as another impact creates a third web. Frantic, knowing even the reinforced door can't hold long, her questing hand closes on a familiar tool - the '_Flamebird_'!

Eight inches long, the tri-colored blade curves and waves like a flame and, secured at the gripe by a multitude of snaps to her wrist, it is a formidable weapon. Gibbs gave it to her during the Carson / Adolphus case, and it's as deadly as it is elegant. Frantic, hearing another impact upon the weakening door, she snaps the leather band tightly about her right wrist, gasps as her attention is wrenched by a horrific scream.

x

Michelle, fighting the intense pain in her twisted neck, has attacked Mawher from behind. A devastating kick slams him into the door, makes him drop the stool. The metal clatters loudly as he turns to meet this new threat.

Michelle feints a kick to his groin and as he backs his hips away he leans forward. She changes the attack to a high kick to his face. The impact drives him back into the glass door. She launches another assault, her foot slams into his chest hard enough for him to crack the door from ceiling to floor.

The horrific pain in her neck threatening to undo her, she can't stop. If she stops they'll both die! She spins sharply, her heel comes up, slams against his head, drives him to the side into one of Abby's machines. He lies across it, apparently stunned, but then he pushes his body off the machine and she aims another kick high to his face.

She can't believe he catches her ankle, holds her leg up high and his own foot comes up hard. She shrieks as a blast of pain explodes on her crotch.

Her left leg gives out under her and she falls, unable to prevent him from grasping her hair from behind. He yanks her to her feet, turns her and his fist knocks her onto her back.

"MICHELLE!" Abby cries, wants to leave the safety of her sanctuary. The flamebird is strapped to her wrist, she can kill–.

She can't _kill_. The moment's hesitation seems forever as Mawher, knee upon Michelle's stomach, batters her face with a hailstorm of punches.

"STOP IT!"

His hands clench her throat. He yanks her upright so hard Abby fears he's broken her wrenched neck, but she cannot be so lucky!

He spins her around toward the door and his hands crunch her throat so tightly from behind she can make no sound, draw no breath. Blood flows down her face, pours onto her blouse. Abby, armed with the deadly blade, having only the option to kill if that door opens, stares in horror through the webbed door. Mikel holds Michelle before him, his fingers dig deeply, closing her throat. She tries to pry his hands away, digs her sharp nails in, kicks his legs as hard as she can but he doesn't ease the pressure. She struggles for breath that won't come. "Open the _door_, Abby!"

"Please, Mikel, stop hurting her!"

He lifts Michelle off her feet by his hands pressing into her neck. The red of the dangling woman's bloody face deepening as he chokes her. Michelle can't even gag, frantically strains for air, digs her nails into his hands, kicks back. Her blows connect ineffectually. Abby sees she's growing weaker, strangled, hung in the madman's hands.

"Open -" he digs his fingers tighter, deeper into her throat, her eyes reflecting her pain, "the damn - _door_!"

"All _right_!" Pressing the button on her remote, Abby unlocks the fractured door. It slides aside as the rear door bursts open.

x

"_Let her go_!" Gibbs' shout fills the room as the four Agents take wide positions, their Sigs aimed at Mawher. He turns, holds Michelle's body as a shield.

"It's over, Mikel!" Abby cries, her hands raised appealingly, the flamebird glinting before her.

Michelle grows still, her arms drop limply to her sides, her legs no longer kick.

With an enraged roar Mawher throws the slight woman toward the Agents, blocks their aim, and before she falls to the floor he leaps into the office. He slams into Abby, who shrieks as she is forced down under him. His hands close about her, squeeze tightly, try to crushes her throat. Abby's tries to shove him off, right hand to his face. She feels something hot wash over her arm and chest, bathe her and she struggles under him for a moment before she realizes that he's no longer choking her.

Abby feels herself awash in hot blood; none of it hers. Her right hand raised to press his jaw upward, the flamebird is imbedded deep in his throat. With horrendous gagging he goes still upon her, his blood covers her from the gushing wound.

x

Her mind must have blanked for Gibbs and McGee drag the limp body off her and Gibbs is pulling her to her feet. She clings tightly to him, neither caring that their clothes are now covered in infected blood.

She looks past him and McGee, who joins them in the unreserved hug, to see that Tony and Ziva are assisting the gasping Michelle. She sits up with Tony's support, her upraised hand telling Abby that she'll be all right.

Abby doesn't believe her.

There will be time later for talking, for cleaning and disposing of infected clothing and all that must be done. Just this minute Abby clings tightly to Gibbs and McGee, just clings to them.


	13. Epilogues

Epilogue One

Abby Sciuto attracts her friend's attention by knocking on the open door to the hospital room. Dawn looks up from the pile of papers resting upon her blanket covered legs. "Hi, Sunshine," she calls softly.

"Hey," the younger woman grins happily. "It's over."

"How can you tell?" Abby asks, half annoyed. She'd looked forward to telling her.

"You're relaxed."

"Well, not relaxed," she temporizes, "but yes, it's over. Kind of."

"Who was it? Why?"

Abby sighs. There is so much that's not over, so much pain and loss, that she can't tell it yet. "I'll work into it, okay?" She steps to the side of the bed. "What are you reading?" There's several dozen multi-hued papers scattered upon the young woman's lap, and set on the table beside her is a FedEx envelope.

"Rosa Arnell overnighted these to me from Saint Alphonsus. She got word to the first through third grades, my old students, even before they started taking attendance." The papers are hand written or drawn 'Get Well' cards. The top one on the pile, an orange paper written upon in green in a young child's awkward penmanship, reads 'Dear Miss Caldwell: They say you're hurt. I hope you won't hurt anymore, Love Michael, Miss Arnell's Class, Grade 1. I hope you remember me.)'

"I'm sure you do," Abby says softly.

"Yes...." Dawn's broken hand slips affectionately over the pile.

Abby pulls up a chair beside the bed, hoping to hear more about 'Dawn's hundred children', infinitely grateful for an hour of normalcy with her dearest friend.

Epilogue Two

George Donaldson knocks on the Rectory's guest room door. A moment later he hears movement within the room before the lockless door swings inward. The woman beyond it is wearing a blue tee shirt and green pants, some of the very few random pieces of clothing that have been scrounged up from equally random sources. Most of them almost fit her. Tomorrow there will be an opportunity to obtain less mismatched clothing. With the exception of the 'uniform' she'd put on this morning she has absolutely nothing left.

"I just wanted to make sure you're all right." Left unsaid is the message that he's retiring for the night. What comes through far more explicitly is his lingering concern.

"I'll be fine," Siobhan assures him, not mentioning that she has given this assurance six times in the past few hours.

"Siobhan,"

"George, I'm going to recover. You know me, I'm _always_ losing things. I just - never lost everything at the same time before." Her empty smile can't hide the catch in her voice.

Some of the things she had lost were, he knows, of great sentimental value; relics of friends and loved ones long passed onward. "They were _things_," she emphasizes, removing her glasses, looking at him with her naked green eyes, "too many people died, that is where our focus belongs."

George knows she is unable to see his grim expression, which grows darker as her view of him is lost. She can only see a haze, a formless blur. He suspects he blends into the hall behind him.

Does she really believe he cannot read her far better than that? She can't look him in the eye and lie, and everything she has said has been very carefully true. She _will_ recover - eventually. They _were_ things. Their focus is - and belongs - upon the many innocents who have died.

It is the emotional toll she's denying. She's trying to hide behind blindness and exposing her soul all the more clearly for it.

x

Siobhan had steadfastly refused to dwell upon the fact that, if not for having closed her door before Abby's call had transferred to her cell phone, she'd have been in her living room and she'd be dead. She once again shoves the thought from her mind. It is far easier to focus on the loss of _things_ than to dwell upon how close she had come to death. Her body would've been blown into tiny pieces from the force of explosions detonating simultaneously in every one of her rooms. It had obliterated the entire top floor and reduced the fifth and fourth floors to uninhabitable–

"I'll be _fine_ - I promise," she insists, reaching out blindly to touch his arm reassuringly. It's only luck that he hadn't moved. But she's run out of true words she can say and wishes he would _go _before she's trapped and unable to give truthful reassurance. "Go to sleep and let me get some too."

"Okay. But if you need anything–"

"Good _night_, George."

She closes the door and turns. In that moment, seeing only moving fog, she flashes back. Her building shakes violently and a blast of terror consumes her. She slaps her hands over her mouth to contain the bleat of fear, hears her glasses strike the carpeted floor, prays he hasn't heard.

Her heart is clutched in an icy cold grip. It pounds wildly, breath sucked hard through her clamping hands. She staggers blindly through the murky fog, collides with the bed, her terror spikes as she falls, unhurt, onto the mattress. Squeezing her eyes shut, gasping as her heart pounds violently, she clutches the bedding, unable to breathe against the panic. For a moment she is back on those shaking stairs, the building comes down around her as she runs blindly.

"Please, God!" she begs, barely able to whisper, eyes clenched shut to hold back stinging tears, "please _help _me!"

Epilogue Three

By eight that night Leroy Jethro Gibbs leans back in his chair, thinking that the nightmare is finally over. Abby Sciuto might well have had to spend an unknown amount of time under Protective Custody. But in an astounding display of 'Employer Loyalty' Mikel Mawher maintained on his office computer detailed information of the names, addresses and contact information on Harry Whitney, who had shot at Michelle and later executed Melody Whitehurst; Pete Govis whose car had killed Robert Johnson; Thomas Barkarian who still sits in NCIS' lowest level; and Jose 'Jacques' Gonzalez, Rene Vazquez, Jon 'Mad Dog' Murdoch and Bill 'Gates' Avalon who had so brutally assassinated Erica Paulson.

Mawher himself had broken into Siobhan O'Mallory's apartment, stealthily wiring C4 throughout the rooms, even under the bed as the women slept, ever ready to shoot both of them in cold blood had either stirred. He'd linked everything by wireless relay to the telephone because women can't resist using one. It had been completely irrelevant to him if Abby had been killed that morning or later, he was quite satisfied with Siobhan's death and had been quite put out when, through nothing more than luck, she had survived. It did feel good, however, that Abby had detonated the bombs.

Since O'Mallory survived, and in consideration of the women's friendship, he was starting a search for someone to assassinate her. A spectacular 'hit' while she's celebrating Mass would be terrific, if he could find someone stupid and cheap enough to assassinate a Priest at the Altar for $1,000.

There are also records of Paul Markewitz, who is to break into Abby's apartment in two days and murder her in her sleep; and Timothy 'Nord' Bjorklund who is, tonight, to slip into Dawn Caldwell's hospital room as she sleeps and slit her throat.

It was only Mawher's growing impatience with so many near misses and miraculous escapes that ultimately drove him to confront her today. He states in his electronic diary that he only intends to torment her, or to watch her breakdown from the fear. But Abby and Lee's reports make it quite clear something had gone wrong with his plan and he'd chosen to act instead.

Within two hours three Teams of Agents had swept the pack. All participants face a series of charges. Total expenditure for the nightmare: $4,000.

x

Gibbs saves the final file on his computer and forwards it to the Director. This case has cost a heavy toll, in lives lost and futures damaged or destroyed. Gibbs doesn't want to dwell on the costs, they'd been before him on his monitor.

The case is now 'over'. The prime mover - prime madman - is dead. Those he'd hired to assault and kill are in custody and Abby - and her friends - are safe. About two hours ago, Siobhan O'Mallory had telephoned from the Rectory to _apologize_. She'd been embarrassed by her own fury and the lurid, uncommon terms in which it had been expressed. He'd told her he doesn't even remember it.

It had been DiNozzo who had summed up all their thoughts earlier this evening: 'It's amazing he could find so many stupid people willing to commit murder for so little, and then depend on them to commit smart murders.'

'He didn't give a damn about them,' Gibbs had retorted. 'just as long as Abby suffered before she died. That's why he left the file thingy right on his desktop where we couldn't miss it. Remember the first line in it?'

'The price of stupidity is death.'

x

The other Agents have gone. Night has fallen hard, stars visible in skylight and windows; yet he notes Michelle Lee is still at her desk. She shuts her computer down and gathers her possessions into her purse. For a moment he evaluates the slight Asian woman, knows that, with so many questions of her abilities, only time will provide the answers.

She bears the marks on her assault in a mask of make-up covered bruises. He'd offered her the evening off. She'd refused, saying Ziva wouldn't leave over this so she won't either.

Standing up, he crosses the bullpen as she completes her preparations and rises. "You did well, Lee."

"Thank you, sir." She looks up to him, meets his eyes. He remembers a time, so recently, when she couldn't.

"How are you?"

She thinks about the question. How is she, and how much is she willing to show? Ducky had examined her, concluded that the damage to her neck, while painful, was not severe enough to warrant hospitalization, something she was relieved about. The marks were livid for hours. Ducky had recommended she be fitted with a neck brace. She'd refused. After some negotiation; negotiation he'd been surprised about but had permitted only due to the limited damage, he'd have her wear it while she slept.

Abby had recommended privately that she actually _sleep._ Michelle actually surprised them both by agreeing.

She glances away. Before the evening there had been a brief 'welcome back / congratulations on your promotion' party. It'd been very brief because no one had felt much like celebrating. But DiNozzo had gone out and had gotten her a gift. It is a gold statue on a faux marble base, depicting a woman on a crutch, one leg and opposite arm in casts, neck braced and head wrapped in bandages. The legend reads 'Most Frequently Injured Award'. It sits next to her monitor and she's determined not to let it become prophetic.

She turns back to look up at him, touching her neck. "I'm fine, sir. Doctor Mallard was very helpful."

Gibbs can hear the lie, and allows her to have it anyway. "I think he likes having living patients."

"I think so too, sir; at least then he gets to have real conversations." Gibbs extends his hand toward the elevator, indicating she should take the lead. For him it's a rare thing indeed. He'd overheard DiNozzo commenting on this earlier, that he never lets anyone go first. That's not entirely true, but one must first _earn_ the privilege. "Sir, may I ask you a question?" she says as they leave the bullpen.

"You're a member of my team, Lee; you can ask me any question you want;" he pushes the call button, "it doesn't always guarantee you'll get an answer."

"Fair enough, sir." They board and the car begins its descent. "Sir, your initial suspicion was that Mikel Mawher was guilty, but then you changed your mind."

"The 'facts' led away from him."

Michelle reflects briefly that she was not above that very underestimation. She'd confronted him and had backed off from the pathetic creature she'd perceived him to be. That mistake had almost cost her a broken neck, and then her life.

"Normally I follow my gut, this time I didn't. It's not going to happen again."

"No, sir," she says as the doors open on the lobby, "I don't imagine it will."

As she steps out she reaches up and slaps the back of his head. She doesn't slow down as she turns right toward the main doors.

Gibbs, far too surprised to be angry, steps out of the car. He watches the slight young woman as she walks out the turnstile past the Security arch and screening station. He'd long thought of the team he leads as being, as McGee once said, 'eccentric'. Now, watching her leave the building and cross the walkway to get into a waiting car, he realizes he's going to have to find a new word.

_Fin._

Next Episode: 'Dark Night.'

Appearances are deceptive and old cases return to haunt the NCIS team. The mystery of a Pentagon Cryptographer heralds the outbreak of war.


End file.
